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Physics of Plasmas / Volume 19 / Issue 2 / LETTERS

Phys. Plasmas 19, 020703 (2012); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3683559 (4 pages)

An optical analysis tool for avoiding dust formation in very-high frequency hydrogen diluted silane plasmas at low substrate temperatures

M. M. de Jong, J. de Koning, J. K. Rath, and R. E. I. Schropp

Faculty of Science, Nanophotonics - Physics of Devices, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80.000, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands

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(Received 1 September 2011; accepted 3 January 2012; published online 14 February 2012)

Control of the formation of dust particles in a silane deposition plasma is very important for avoiding electrical shunts in devices, such as thin film silicon solar cells. In this work we present a noninvasive in situ method for identification of the plasma regime, based on optical emission spectroscopy (OES), which can be applied to silane/hydrogen plasmas at low substrate temperatures. By monitoring the OES spectra as a function of the position perpendicular to the plasma electrodes we developed a method to identify the transition of a plasma from the dust free to a dusty regime, which was confirmed by TEM images of layers deposited in both regimes. Using this technique we mapped this transition as a function of applied forward very-high frequency (VHF) power and hydrogen dilution at different substrate temperatures. The advantage of this technique is that the experiment is insensitive to optical transmission loss at the viewport due to deposition of silicon films. As the transition from the dust free to the dusty regime is substrate temperature dependent and the transition from amorphous to nanocrystalline growth mainly depends on hydrogen dilution, a limited parameter window has been defined in which dust-free amorphous silicon can be deposited at low substrate temperatures. A single simple OES technique can be used for in situ monitoring of amorphous to nanocrystalline transition as well as the onset of the dusty regime in a thin film silicon cell fabrication process.

© 2012 American Institute of Physics

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KEYWORDS, PACS, and IPC

Keywords

crystallisation, dusty plasmas, plasma deposition, plasma diagnostics, plasma impurities, plasma probes, plasma temperature, silicon, transmission electron microscopy

PACS

  • 52.27.Lw

    Dusty or complex plasmas; plasma crystals

  • 52.70.Ds

    Electric and magnetic measurements

  • 52.77.Dq

    Plasma-based ion implantation and deposition

  • 52.25.Vy

    Impurities in plasmas

International Patent Classification (IPC)

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3683559

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

1070-664X (print)  
1089-7674 (online)

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Institute of Physics

For access to fully linked references, you need to log in.
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