Reactive gas pulsing sputtering process, a promising technique to elaborate silicon oxynitride multilayer nanometric antireflective coatings

Abstract

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Analysis and fabrication of antireflective coating for photovoltaics based on a photonic-crystal concept and generated by evolutionary optimization

“…The structure we study in the present paper has emerged as a solution consistently produced by global optimization algorithms when asked to find the best possible antireflective coating (ARC) in normal incidence as a multilayer with two alternating refractive indices (1.4 and 1.7, which are typical of the silicon oxynitride we use in the last part of the paper to fabricate the ARC [11] or of biological materials, typically chitin [12]) on top of an amorphous hydrogenated silicon layer.…”

“…We have used a reactive sputtering, a process which is known to be easily scalable, to fabricate nonstoichiometric silicon oxynitride Si x O y N z layers the refractive index of which ranges typically from 1.4 to 1.7. Higher index can be reached for a higher content in silicon with this technique [11], however in that case the layers become absorbent. A crystalline silicon target is placed at 9.5 cm in front of a rotating substrate holder and sputtered using a radio-frequency power of 250 W and at 13.56 MHz in an atmosphere of Ar/O 2 /N 2 [11].…”

“…Higher index can be reached for a higher content in silicon with this technique [11], however in that case the layers become absorbent. A crystalline silicon target is placed at 9.5 cm in front of a rotating substrate holder and sputtered using a radio-frequency power of 250 W and at 13.56 MHz in an atmosphere of Ar/O 2 /N 2 [11]. The gas flows F Ar , F O 2 , and F N 2 are controlled using mass flow meters.…”

A Review: Preparation, Performance, and Applications of Silicon Oxynitride Film

“…In addition to controlling the proportion of gas, the preparation method also has a certain influence on the refractive index of the SiN x O y film. Farhaoui et al [63] used the reactive gas pulse in sputtering process (RGPP) to adjust the composition of SiN x O y film from oxide to nitride by controlling the average flow rate of O 2 . Compared with the conventional reaction process (CP), not only did the deposition rate increase, but also a wide range of SiN x O y films’ refractive indexes varying within the same range could be obtained through this pulse process.…”

Ultra thin anti-reflective coatings designed using Differential Evolution

“…We deposit non-stoechiometric silicon oxynitride Si x O y N z layers thanks to reactive radiofrequency magnetron sputtering 25 . With this technique, a pure silicon target (100 mm in diameter) is sputtered with a radiofrequency power at 250 W and 13.56 MHz in atmosphere of Ar/O 2 /N 2 .…”