Fast deposition of amorphous carbon and silicon layers

A new plasma deposition technique is described. In this method a high density and strongly flowing argon plasma is admixed with monomers such as CH/sub 4/, C/sub 2/H/sub 2/, SiH/sub 4/, etc. Through effective charge transfer and dissociative recombination the ion charge is transferred to the fully dissociated monomer fragments. As the to be deposited particles as C and Si have low ionization potentials they are preferably recharged. The method results in high deposition rates of a-C:H (up to 100 nm/s) and a-Si:H layers (30 nm/s). Properties of the layers are reviewed and a tentative model for plasma description is discusse

Atomic hydrogen level populations and hydrogen dissociation degree in an expanding thermal plasma

Optical absorption spectroscopy has been applied to measure the abs. population densities of the first excited states levels of at. hydrogen H*(n = 2) and argon Ar*(4s) in an expanding cascaded arc plasma in a hydrogen-argon mixt. It is demonstrated that the method allows us to det. both H*(n = 2) and Ar*(4s) abs. d. radial profiles for H2 admixts. in Ar ranging from 0.7 to 10% with good accuracy. It has been shown that the d. of hydrogen excited atoms H*(n = 2) serves as an indicator of the presence of argon ions and hydrogen mols. in the expanding plasma. A kinetic model is used to understand evolution of H*(n = 2) d. in the expansion, and to est. the total at. hydrogen population d. and hydrogen dissocn. degree in sub- and supersonic regions of the plasma. [on SciFinder (R)