AVS 50th International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Wednesday Sessions
       Session PS1-WeM

Paper PS1-WeM6
Correlation between Size of Clusters and Qualities of a-Si:H Films for SiH@sub 4@ High Frequency Discharges

Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 10:00 am, Room 314

Session: Plasma Processing of Nanostructures and Nanomaterials
Presenter: K. Koga, Kyushu University, Japan
Authors: K. Koga, Kyushu University, Japan
N. Kaguchi, Kyushu University, Japan
M. Shiratani, Kyushu University, Japan
Y. Watanabe, Kyushu University, Japan
Correspondent: Click to Email
Previously, we have shown that a reduction of amount of particles below 10 nm in size (clusters) formed in SiH@sub 4@ high frequency discharges is the key to deposit hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films of extremely small microstructure parameter R@alpha@ < 0.01. In this work, we have studied correlation between cluster size and a-Si:H film qualities by using the cluster suppressed plasma CVD method@footnote 1@ together with newly developed downstream cluster collection (DCC) method. The following results have been obtained in our experiment: 1) the DCC method offers a quite high sensitivity deduction of size and density of clusters above 1 nm in size and 10@super 4@ cm@super -3@ in the reactor; 2) An initial fill factor (FF@sub i@) of a n@super +@Si/a-Si:H/Ni Schottky solar cell gradually increases from 0.46 for mean cluster size d@sub c@= 9.0 nm to 0.48 for d@sub c@= 3.7 nm and significantly increases to 0.53 for d@sub c@= 1.6 nm. 3) The FF@sub i@ value increases with decreasing volume fraction of clusters. Experiments for studing correlation between amount of clusters of sub nm in size and film qualities is underway. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@M. Shiratani, K. Koga, M. Kai, and Y. Watanabe, Thin Solid Films 427, 1(2003).