A Particular Photo-CVD Apparatus for Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Deposition

A new PHOTO-CVD apparatus has been built in order to deposit a – Si : H films and other kinds of amorphous thin films by a technique which is both simple and versatile. This apparatus is composed of three chambers connected together: a load-lock chamber, a process chamber and a third chamber for in-situ analysis of deposited films. A peculiarity of the lamp, a dielectric discharge lamp which can work with noble gases like Xe or Kr, is that it can be completely dismounted without breaking the vacuum in order to clean the optical MgF 2 window. By this method, the deposition chamber can be kept in very clean conditions. In this apparatus, we started to deposit a – Si x C 1−x : H of very good quality, taking their thickness into account. These films have been completely characterized by chemical (RBS, ERDA) and optical (PDS) methods. Their quality can be compared with quality of a – Si : H samples of the same thickness obtained by PECVD.