Polymorphous silicon deposited in large area reactor at 13 and 27 MHz

Despite of a growing interest in this material, until now the studies on polymorphous silicon (pm-Si:H) have been performed on small laboratory reactors working at 13.56 MHz. Envisaging an industrial application of pm-Si:H, the technology was transferred to a large area plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition reactor (25 x 40 cm) working at excitation frequencies of 13.56 and 27.12 MHz. The plasma was characterized by impedance probe measurements and the films were characterized by spectroscopic ellipsometry, infrared spectroscopy and hydrogen evolution experiments, which are techniques that allow a rapid and reliable identification of pm-Si:H structure. Conductivity measurements were also performed to determine their transport properties. The results show that scaling up using the 13.56 MHz was successfully done and pm-Si:H films were deposited at a growth rate of approximate to 12 nm/min. Moreover, by using the 27.12 MHz excitation frequency the growth rate was even further increased to above 18 nm/min, as desired for industrial production. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.