Abstract
The surface silicon hydride composition of plasma deposited hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films has been investigated through surface sensitive in situ attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy. The fraction of SiHx (x = 1,2,3) on the surface is reported for films deposited at substrate temperatures in the range 40-370 °C and a series decomposition reaction set in which higher hydrides decompose into lower hydrides (SiH3→SiH2→SiH) for increasing substrate temperature is proposed. Surface dangling bonds promote the decomposition reactions on a-Si:H as concluded from experiments in which the incident ion flux during deposition is enhanced. A comparison is made with results reported for hydrogenated crystalline silicon surfaces and the hydrogen coverage of the a-Si:H surface is discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-16 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Surface Science |
| Volume | 530 |
| Issue number | 1-2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 20 2003 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by the NSF/DOE Partnership for Basic Plasma Science and Engineering (Award No. DMR 97-13280) and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. D.M. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation pre-doctoral fellowship program. The research of W.K. has been made possible by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). Many thanks are due Prof. D. Maroudas, Dr. S. Ramalingam, S. Agarwal, and S. Sriraman for insightful discussions.
Keywords
- Amorphous surfaces
- Growth
- Infrared absorption spectroscopy
- Ion bombardment
- Plasma processing
- Silicon
- Surface chemical reaction
