Catalytic Chemical Vapor Deposition (CTC–CVD) Method Producing High Quality Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon

A new method of producing high quality hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films is presented. An SiH 4 . and H 2 gas mixture is decomposed without using any plasmas or photochemical excitation, but using only thermal and catalytic reactions between deposition-gas and a heated tungsten catalyzer. Photoconductivity of films produced by this methodreaches 10 -3 (Ωcm) -1 and photosensitivity exceeds 10 5 for illumination of AM-1 light of 100 mW/cm 2 .