Limitations of high pressure sputtering for amorphous silicon deposition

Abstract

Amorphous silicon thin films were deposited using the high pressure sputtering (HPS) technique to study the influence of deposition parameters on film composition, presence of impurities, atomic bonding characteristics and optical properties. An optical emission spectroscopy (OES) system has been used to identify the different species present in the plasma in order to obtain appropriate conditions to deposit high purity films. Composition measurements in agreement with the OES information showed impurities which critically depend on the deposition rate and on the gas pressure. We prove that films deposited at the highest RF power and 3.4×10 −2 mbar, exhibit properties as good as the ones of the films deposited by other more standard techniques.

Ga2O3/GaN Heterointerface-Based Self-Driven Broad-Band Ultraviolet Photodetectors with High Responsivity

“…Most Ga 2 O 3 /GaN heterointerfaces were developed by depositing Ga 2 O 3 on the GaN surface utilizing numerous techniques such as metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD), sputtering, thermal oxidation, and pulse laser deposition. ,− Among various approaches, MOCVD has the demerit of using hazardous precursors that restrict the feasibility of mass production . Also, while depositing the film using sputtering and pulsed laser deposition (PLD), the substrate surface preparation may be critical in determining the adhesion; the setup cost is also very high. , On the other hand, thermal oxidation is a simple and convenient method for creating oxides directly on the substrate. This technique can minimize physical damage induced by plasma processing and undesirable contaminants from foreign elements of the deposited film. ,, Wolter et al demonstrated thermal annealing of GaN at 900 °C, which leads to the synthesis of bulk Ga 2 O 3 on GaN.…”

Electrical Characterization of Amorphous Silicon MIS-Based Structures for HIT Solar Cell Applications

“…In this work, we used the electron cyclotron resonance chemical vapor deposition (ECR-CVD) technique to deposit the a-Si:H, which is a remote plasma procedure [6] that could reduce the damage to the c-Si surface. Other advantages of ECR-CVD are the possibility of in situ substrate plasma pretreatment [7] and low processing pressure, which permits minimizing the contamination of the growing film [8]. The possibility for scaling-up makes the ECR-CVD a very attractive technique for commercial solar cell fabrication.…”