The influence of charge effect on the growth of hydrogenated amorphous silicon by the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition technique

The authors observe at lower substrate temperatures that the scatter in the dark conductivity on hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films grown on insulating substrates (e.g., Corning 7059 glass) by the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition technique (HWCVD) can be five orders of magnitude or more. This is especially true at deposition temperatures below 350 C. However, when the authors grow the same materials on substrates with a conductive grid, virtually all of their films have acceptable dark conductivity (< 5 {times} 10{sup {minus}10} S/cm) at all deposition temperatures below 425 C. This is in contrast to only about 20% of the materials grown in this same temperature range on insulating substrates having an acceptable dark conductivity. The authors estimated an average energy of 5 eV electrons reaching the growing surface in vacuum, and did additional experiments to see the influence of both the electron flux and the energy of the electrons on the film growth. Although these effects do not seem to be important for growing a-Si:H by HWCVD on conductive substrates, they help better understand the important parameters for a-Si:H growth, and thus, to optimize these parameters in other applications of HWCVD technology.