• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.111-114
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• 2008

We studied the influence of nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin film thickness on top gate nc-Si thin film transistor (TFT) fabricated at $180^{\circ}C$. The nc-Si thickness affects the characteristics of nc-Si TFT due to the nc-Si growth similar to a columnar. As the thickness of nc-Si increases from 40 nm to 200 nm, the grain size was increased from 20 nm to 40 nm. Having a large grain size, the thick nc-Si TFT surpasses the thin nc-Si TFT in terms of electrical characteristics such as field effect mobility. The channel resistance was decreased due to growth of the grain. We obtained the experimental results that the field effect mobility of the fabricated devices of which nc-Si thickness is 60, 90 and 130 nm are 26, 77 and $119\;cm^2/Vsec$, respectively. The leakage current, however, is increased from $7.2{\times}10^{-10}$ to $1.9{\times}10^{-8}\;A$ at $V_{GS}=-4.4\;V$ when the nc-Si thickness increases. It is originated from the decrease of the channel resistance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.254-255
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• 2012

Interest in nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin films has been growing because of their favorable processing conditions for certain electronic devices. In particular, there has been an increase in the use of nc-Si thin films in photovoltaics for large solar cell panels and in thin film transistors for large flat panel displays. One of the most important material properties for these device applications is the macroscopic charge-carrier mobility. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) or nc-Si is a basic material in thin film transistors (TFTs). However, a-Si:H based devices have low carrier mobility and bias instability due to their metastable properties. The large number of trap sites and incomplete hydrogen passivation of a-Si:H film produce limited carrier transport. The basic electrical properties, including the carrier mobility and stability, of nc-Si TFTs might be superior to those of a-Si:H thin film. However, typical nc-Si thin films tend to have mobilities similar to a-Si films, although changes in the processing conditions can enhance the mobility. In polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films, the performance of the devices is strongly influenced by the boundaries between neighboring crystalline grains. These grain boundaries limit the conductance of macroscopic regions comprised of multiple grains. In much of the work on poly-Si thin films, it was shown that the performance of TFTs was largely determined by the number and location of the grain boundaries within the channel. Hence, efforts were made to reduce the total number of grain boundaries by increasing the average grain size. However, even a small number of grain boundaries can significantly reduce the macroscopic charge carrier mobility. The nano-crystalline or polymorphous-Si development for TFT and solar cells have been employed to compensate for disadvantage inherent to a-Si and micro-crystalline silicon (${\mu}$-Si). Recently, a novel process for deposition of nano-crystralline silicon (nc-Si) thin films at room temperature was developed using neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBaCVD) with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300 eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at room temperature. In previous our experiments, we verified favorable properties of nc-Si thin films for certain electronic devices. During the formation of the nc-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. The more resent work on nc-Si thin film transistors (TFT) was done. We identified the performance of nc-Si TFT active channeal layers. The dependence of the performance of nc-Si TFT on the primary process parameters is explored. Raman, FT-IR and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to study the microstructures and the crystalline volume fraction of nc-Si films. The electric properties were investigated on Cr/SiO2/nc-Si metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.154-155
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• 2012

The promise of nano-crystalites (nc) as a technological material, for applications including display backplane, and solar cells, may ultimately depend on tailoring their behavior through doping and crystallinity. Impurities can strongly modify electronic and optical properties of bulk and nc semiconductors. Highly doped dopant also effect structural properties (both grain size, crystal fraction) of nc-Si thin film. As discussed in several literatures, P atoms or radicals have the tendency to reside on the surface of nc. The P-radical segregation on the nano-grain surfaces that called self-purification may reduce the possibility of new nucleation because of the five-coordination of P. In addition, the P doping levels of ${\sim}2{\times}10^{21}\;at/cm^3$ is the solubility limitation of P in Si; the solubility of nc thin film should be smaller. Therefore, the non-activated P tends to segregate on the grain boundaries and the surface of nc. These mechanisms could prevent new nucleation on the existing grain surface. Therefore, most researches shown that highly doped nc-thin film by using conventional PECVD deposition system tended to have low crystallinity, where the formation energy of nucleation should be higher than the nc surface in the intrinsic materials. If the deposition technology that can make highly doped and simultaneously highly crystallized nc at low temperature, it can lead processes of next generation flexible devices. Recently, we are developing a novel CVD technology with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, named as neutral beam assisted CVD (NBaCVD), which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at low temperatures. During the formation of the nc-/pm-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. In the case of phosphorous doped Si thin films, the doping efficiency also increased as increasing the reflector bias (i.e. increasing NPB energy). At 330V of reflector bias, activation energy of the doped nc-Si thin film reduced as low as 0.001 eV. This means dopants are fully occupied as substitutional site, even though the Si thin film has nano-sized grain structure. And activated dopant concentration is recorded as high as up to 1020 #/$cm^3$ at very low process temperature (＜ $80^{\circ}C$) process without any post annealing. Theoretical solubility for the higher dopant concentration in Si thin film for order of 1020 #/$cm^3$ can be done only high temperature process or post annealing over $650^{\circ}C$. In general, as decreasing the grain size, the dopant binding energy increases as ratio of 1 of diameter of grain and the dopant hardly be activated. The highly doped nc-Si thin film by low-temperature NBaCVD process had smaller average grain size under 10 nm (measured by GIWAXS, GISAXS and TEM analysis), but achieved very higher activation of phosphorous dopant; NB energy sufficiently transports its energy to doping and crystallization even though without supplying additional thermal energy. TEM image shows that incubation layer does not formed between nc-Si film and SiO2 under later and highly crystallized nc-Si film is constructed with uniformly distributed nano-grains in polymorphous tissues. The nucleation should be start at the first layer on the SiO2 later, but it hardly growth to be cone-shaped micro-size grains. The nc-grain evenly embedded pm-Si thin film can be formatted by competition of the nucleation and the crystal growing, which depend on the NPB energies. In the evaluation of the light soaking degradation of photoconductivity, while conventional intrinsic and n-type doped a-Si thin films appeared typical degradation of photoconductivity, all of the nc-Si thin films processed by the NBaCVD show only a few % of degradation of it. From FTIR and RAMAN spectra, the energetic hydrogen NB atoms passivate nano-grain boundaries during the NBaCVD process because of the high diffusivity and chemical potential of hydrogen atoms.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.103-109
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• 2014

Highly efficient hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) thin-film solar cells were prepared on flexible stainless steel substrates using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. To enhance the performance of solar cells, material properties of back reflectors, n-doped seed layers and wide bandgap nc-SiC:H window layers were optimized. The light scattering efficiency of Ag back reflectors was improved by increasing the surface roughness of the films deposited at elevated substrate temperatures. Using the n-doped seed layers with high crystallinity, the initial crystal growth of intrinsic nc-Si:H absorber layers was improved, resulting in the elimination of the defect-dense amorphous regions at the n/i interfaces. The nc-SiC:H window layers with high bandgap over 2.2 eV were deposited under high hydrogen dilution conditions. The vertical current flow of the films was enhanced by the formation of Si nanocrystallites in the amorphous SiC:H matrix. Under optimized conditions, a high conversion efficiency of 9.13% ($V_{oc}=0.52$, $J_{sc}=25.45mA/cm^2$, FF = 0.69) was achieved for the flexible nc-Si:H thin-film solar cells.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.317-321
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• 2019

We investigated the characteristics of nano crystalline silicon(nc-Si) thin-film solar cells on graphite substrates. Amorphous silicon(a-Si) thin-film solar cells on graphite plates show low conversion efficiency due to high surface roughness, and many recombination by dangling bonds. In previous studies, we deposited barrier films by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition(PECVD) on graphite plate to reduce surface roughness and achieved ~7.8 % cell efficiency. In this study, we fabricated nc-Si thin film solar cell on graphite in order to increase the efficiency of solar cells. We achieved 8.45 % efficiency on graphite plate and applied this to nc-Si on graphite sheet for flexible solar cell applications. The characterization of the cell is performed with external quantum efficiency(EQE) and current density-voltage measurements(J-V). As a result, we obtain ~8.42 % cell efficiency in a flexible solar cell fabricated on a graphite sheet, which performance is similar to that of cells fabricated on graphite plates.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.171-171
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• 2012

Neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBa-CVD) process has been developed as a nove,l room temperature deposition process for the light-soaking free nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin films including intrinsic and n-type doped thin film. During formation of nc-Si thin films by the NBa-CVD process with silicon reflector at room temperature, the energetic particles enhance doping efficiency and crystalline phase in nc-Si thin films without additional heating at substrate. The effects of incident NB energy controlled by the reflector bias have been confirmed by Raman spectra analysis. Additionally, TEM images show uniform nc-Si grains which imbedded amorphous phase without incubation layer. The nc-Si films by the NBa-CVD are hardly degenerated by light soaking; the degradations of photoconductivity were just a few percents before and after light irradiation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.109-109
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• 2010

$Er^{3+}$ ion shows a stable and efficient luminescence at 1.54mm due to its $^4I_{13/2}\;{\rightarrow}\;^4I_{15/2}$ intra-4f transition. As this corresponds to the low-loss window of silica-based optical fibers, Er-based light sources have become a mainstay of the long-distance telecom. In most telecom applications, $Er^{3+}$ ions are excited via resonant optical pumping. However, if nanocluster-Si (nc-Si) are co-doped with $Er^{3+}$, $Er^{3+}$ can be excited via energy transfer from excited electrical carriers in the nc-Si as well. This combines the broad, strong absorption band of nc-Si with narrow, stable emission spectra of $Er^{3+}$ to allow top-pumping with off-resonant, low-cost broadband light sources as well as electrical pumping. A widely used method to achieve nc-Si sensitization of $Er^{3+}$ is high-temperature annealing of Er-doped, non-stoichiometric amorphous thin film with excess Si (e.g.,silicon-rich silicon oxide(SRSO)) to precipitate nc-Si and optically activate $Er^{3+}$ at the same time. Unfortunately, such precipitation and growth of nc-Si into Er-doped oxide matrix can lead to $Er^{3+}$ clustering away from nc-Si at anneal temperatures much lower than ${\sim}1000^{\circ}C$ that is necessary for full optical activation of $Er^{3+}$ in $SiO_2$. Recently, silicon-rich silicon nitride (SRSN) was reported to be a promising alternative to SRSO that can overcome this problem of Er clustering. But as nc-Si formation and optical activation $Er^{3+}$ remain linked in Er-doped SRSN, it is not clear which mechanism is responsible for the observed improvement. In this paper, we report on investigating the effect of separating the nc-Si formation and $Er^{3+}$ activation by using hetero-multilayers that consist of nm-thin SRSO or SRSN sensitizing layers with Er-doped $SiO_2$ or $Si_3N_4$ luminescing layers.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.1025-1027
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• 2009

Novel low temperature deposition process for nano-crystalline Si thin film is developed with the hyper-thermal neutral beam (HNB) technology. By our HNB assisted CVD system, the reactive particles can induce crystalline phase in Si thin films and effectively combine with heating effect on substrate. At low deposition temperature under $80^{\circ}C$, the HNB with proper incident energy controlled by the reflector bias can effectively enhance the nano-crystalline formation in Si thin film without any additional process. The electrical properties of Si thin films can be varied from a-Si to nc-Si according to change of HNB energy and substrate temperature. Characterization of these thin films with conductivity reveal that crystalline of Si thin film can increase by assist of HNB with appropriate energy during low temperature deposition. And low temperature prcoessed nc-Si TFT performance has on-off ratio as order 5.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.12-14
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• 2005

Inductively Coupled Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition(ICP-CVD)를 이용하여 공정온도 $150^{\circ}C$에서 Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) 박막을 증착하였다. 실험에서 헬륨(He)가스, 수소($H_2$)가스 그리고 헬륨(He)과 수소($H_2$)의 혼합가스로 희석한 사일렌($SiH_4$)을 반응가스로 이용하였다. 이 혼합가스는 3sccm의 사일렌($SiH_4$)에 헬륨(He)과 수소($H_2$)의 주입율을 20sccm에서부터 60sccm까지 변화시켜 조건을 달리하여 사용했다. 증착한 Nc-Si 박막을 X-ray diffraction (XRD)으로 분석하여 각각의 조건에 대한 Nc-Si 박막의 속성을 연구하였다. 헬륨(He) 또는 수소($H_2$) 혼합가스의 주입율이 커지면서 <111>과 <222>의 최고점(peak)이 더 높아졌으며 결정화 되지 않고 비결정질로 남아 있는 성장층(incubation layer)이 얇아졌다. 이 결과는 nc-Si를 증착할 때 사용한 수소($H_2$) 플라즈마와 헬륨(He) 플라즈마의 효과로 설명할 수 있다. 실험을 통해 ICP-CVD로 증착한 nc-Si 박막을 박막 전계효과트랜지스터 (TFT)에서 우수한 특성의 전자수송층(active layer)으로 사용할 수 있는 것을 확인하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.52-52
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• 2011

A novel deposition process for n-type nanocrystalline silicon (n-type nc-Si) thin films at room temperature has been developed by adopting the neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBa-CVD). During formation of n-type nc-Si thin film by the NBa-CVD process with silicon reflector electrode at room temperature, the energetic particles could induce enhance doping efficiency and crystalline phase in polymorphous-Si thin films without additional heating on substrate; The dark conductivity and substrate temperature of P-doped polymorphous~nano crystalline silicon thin films increased with increasing the reflector bias. The NB energy heating substrate(but lower than $80^{\circ}C$ and increase doping efficiency. This low temperature processed doped nano-crystalline can address key problem in applications from flexible display backplane thin film transistor to flexible solar cell.