Novel oxidation process of hydrogenated amorphous silicon utilizing nitrous oxide plasma

A novel oxidation process in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) using nitrous oxide (N2O) plasma was studied in detail for the first time. The N2O-plasma oxidized a-Si:H has an excellent interface whose interfacial defect density is largely reduced compared with the O2-plasma oxidized a-Si:H. It was elucidated that this oxide layer has almost stoichiometric composition and contains a small amount of N piling up at the interface between the oxide layer and a-Si:H layer. It also turned out that this process has less ion damage than the O2-plasma oxidation process. The reason for the reduction of the interfacial defect density is attributed to the presence of N at the interface and/or less ion damage in this process.