Limitations of high pressure sputtering for amorphous silicon deposition

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

Limitations of high pressure sputtering for amorphous silicon deposition

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. Weprove 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.This work was partially supported by the Project MADRID-PV(Grant No. 2013/MAE-2780) funded by the Comunidad de Madrid, by the Spanish MINECO (Ministerio de economía y competitividad) under grant TEC 2013-41730-R and by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Programa de Financiación de Grupos de Investigación UCM–Banco Santander) under grant 910173-2014. D. Montero acknowledges the Spanish MINECO (Ministerio de economía y competitividad) for financial support under contract BES-2014-067585.Peer Reviewe