• Title/Summary/Keyword: PECVD

Search Result 1,018, Processing Time 0.04 seconds

Prevention of P-i Interface Contamination Using In-situ Plasma Process in Single-chamber VHF-PECVD Process for a-Si:H Solar Cells

  • Han, Seung-Hee;Jeon, Jun-Hong;Choi, Jin-Young;Park, Won-Woong
    • Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
    • /
    • 2011.02a
    • /
    • pp.204-205
    • /
    • 2011
  • In thin film silicon solar cells, p-i-n structure is adopted instead of p/n junction structure as in wafer-based Si solar cells. PECVD is a most widely used thin film deposition process for a-Si:H or ${\mu}c$-Si:H solar cells. For best performance of thin film silicon solar cell, the dopant profiles at p/i and i/n interfaces need to be as sharp as possible. The sharpness of dopant profiles can easily achieved when using multi-chamber PECVD equipment, in which each layer is deposited in separate chamber. However, in a single-chamber PECVD system, doped and intrinsic layers are deposited in one plasma chamber, which inevitably impedes sharp dopant profiles at the interfaces due to the contamination from previous deposition process. The cross-contamination between layers is a serious drawback of a single-chamber PECVD system in spite of the advantage of lower initial investment cost for the equipment. In order to resolve the cross-contamination problem in single-chamber PECVD systems, flushing method of the chamber with NH3 gas or water vapor after doped layer deposition process has been used. In this study, a new plasma process to solve the cross-contamination problem in a single-chamber PECVD system was suggested. A single-chamber VHF-PECVD system was used for superstrate type p-i-n a-Si:H solar cell manufacturing on Asahi-type U FTO glass. A 80 MHz and 20 watts of pulsed RF power was applied to the parallel plate RF cathode at the frequency of 10 kHz and 80% duty ratio. A mixture gas of Ar, H2 and SiH4 was used for i-layer deposition and the deposition pressure was 0.4 Torr. For p and n layer deposition, B2H6 and PH3 was used as doping gas, respectively. The deposition temperature was $250^{\circ}C$ and the total p-i-n layer thickness was about $3500{\AA}$. In order to remove the deposited B inside of the vacuum chamber during p-layer deposition, a high pulsed RF power of about 80 W was applied right after p-layer deposition without SiH4 gas, which is followed by i-layer and n-layer deposition. Finally, Ag was deposited as top electrode. The best initial solar cell efficiency of 9.5 % for test cell area of 0.2 $cm^2$ could be achieved by applying the in-situ plasma cleaning method. The dependence on RF power and treatment time was investigated along with the SIMS analysis of the p-i interface for boron profiles.

  • PDF

Low Temperature Polycrystalline Silicon Deposition by Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Enhanced CVD Using Metal Foam Showerhead (다공성 금속 샤워헤드가 적용된 상압플라즈마 화학기상증착법을 이용한 저온 다결정 실리콘 증착 공정)

  • Park, Hyeong-Gyu;Song, Chang-Hoon;Oh, Hoon-Jung;Baik, Seung Jae
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
    • /
    • v.33 no.5
    • /
    • pp.344-349
    • /
    • 2020
  • Modern thin film deposition processes require high deposition rates, low costs, and high-quality films. Atmospheric pressure plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (AP-PECVD) meets these requirements. AP-PECVD causes little damage on thin film deposition surfaces compared to conventional PECVD. Moreover, a higher deposition rate is expected due to the surface heating effect of atomic hydrogens in AP-PECVD. In this study, polycrystalline silicon thin film was deposited at a low temperature of 100℃ and then AP-PECVD experiments were performed with various plasma powers and hydrogen gas flow rates. A deposition rate of 15.2 nm/s was obtained at the VHF power of 400 W. In addition, a metal foam showerhead was employed for uniform gas supply, which provided a significant improvement in the thickness uniformity.

Fabrication of Metal-insulator-metal Capacitors with SiNx Thin Films Deposited by Plasma-enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

  • Wang, Cong;Kim, Nam-Young
    • Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
    • /
    • v.10 no.5
    • /
    • pp.147-151
    • /
    • 2009
  • For integrated passive device (IPD) applications, we have successfully developed and characterized metalinsulator-metal (MIM) capacitors with 2000 $\AA$ plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) silicon nitride which are deposited with the $SiH_4/NH_3$ gas mixing rate, working pressure, and RF power of PECVD at $250^{\circ}C$. Five PECVD process parameters are designed to lower the refractive index and lower the deposition rate of $Si_3N_4$ films for the high breakdown electric field. For the PECVD process condition of gas mixing rate (0.957), working pressure (0.9 Torr), and RF power (60 W), the atomic force microscopy (AFM) root mean square (RMS) value of about 2000 $\AA$ $Si_3N_4$ on the bottom metal is lowest at 0.862 nm and the breakdown electric field is highest at about 8.0 MV/cm with a capacitance density of 326.5 pF/$mm^2$. A pretreatment of metal electrodes is proposed, which can reduce the peeling of nitride in the harsh test environment of heat, pressure, and humidity.

SiON/SiO2 Multilayer Deposited by PECVD for Low-Loss Waveguides (저손실 광도파로 제작을 위해 PECVD 법에 의해 증착된 SiON/SiO2 다층박막)

  • 김용탁;김동신;윤대호
    • Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
    • /
    • v.41 no.3
    • /
    • pp.197-201
    • /
    • 2004
  • SiO$_2$ and SiON thick films were deposited by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) technique on silicon wafer (100) using SiH$_4$ and $N_2$O as precursor gases. In this work, the influence of rf power, and rf bias power on the optical and physical properties of SiO$_2$ and SiON thick films is presented. The refractive index decreases with increasing rf power, and rf bias power. The refractive index of the films varied from 1.4493 to 1.4952 at wavelength at 1552 nm, with increasing rf power, the nitrogen content decreases while the oxygen content increases, in a manner that the O/N ratio increases approximately linearly.

The Properties of Low Hydrogen Content α-Si Thin Film Using DC-bias Enhanced or Addition of H2Gas in Mesh-type PECVD System (Mesh-type PECVD를 이용한 DC-bias인가 및 수소가스 첨가에 따른 저수소화 비정질 실리콘 박막에 관한 연구)

  • Ryu, Se-Won;Gwon, Do-Hyeon;Park, Seong-Gye;Nam, Seung-Ui;Kim, Hyeong-Jun
    • Korean Journal of Materials Research
    • /
    • v.12 no.4
    • /
    • pp.235-239
    • /
    • 2002
  • In this study mesh-type PECVD system was suggested to minimize the hydrogen concentration. The main structural difference between the triode system and a conventional system is that, a third electrode, a mesh, is inserted between the powered and the ground electrode. We investigated several conditions to compare with conventional PECVD. The main effect of mesh was to minimize the substrate damage by ion bombardment and to enhance the surface reaction to induce hydrogen desorption. It was also found that hydrogen concentration decreased but deposition rate increased as increasing applied bias. Applied DC-bia s enhanced sputtering process. Intense ion bombardment causes the weakly bonded hydrogen or hydrogen-containing species to leave the growing film and increased adatom mobility. Furthermore, addition of hydrogen gas enhance the surface diffusion of adatom.

EFFECTS OF SHOWERHEAD DIAMETERS ON THE FLOWFIELDS IN A RF-PECVD REACTOR (CVD 반응기 내에서의 유동장에 대한 샤워헤드 지름의 영향에 대한 수치적 연구)

  • Kim, You-Jae;Kim, Youn-J.
    • Proceedings of the KSME Conference
    • /
    • 2004.04a
    • /
    • pp.1475-1480
    • /
    • 2004
  • Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) process uses unique property of plasma to modify surfaces and to achieve the high deposition rates. In this study, a vertical thermal RF-PECVD (Radio Frequency-PECVD) reactor is modeled to investigate thermal flow and the deposition rates with various shapes of the showerhead. The showerhead in the CVD reactor has the shape of a ring and gases are injected in parallel with the susceptor, which is a rotating disk. In order to achieve the high deposition rates, we have simulated the thermal flow fields in the reactor with several showerhead models. Especially the effects of the number of injection holes and the rotating speed of the susceptor are studied. Using a commercial code, CFDACE, which uses FVM (Finite Volume Method) and SIMPLE algorithm, governing equations have been solved for the pressure, mass-flow rates and temperature distributions in the CVD reactor. With the help of the Nusselt number and Sherwood number, the heat and mass transfers on the susceptor are investigated. In order to characteristics of measure the flatness of the layer, furthermore, the relative growth rate (RGR) is considered.

  • PDF