Powder-free plasma chemical vapor deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon with high rf power density using modulated rf discharge

Deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon films from SiH4/He gas mixtures was performed by using a square wave amplitude modulated rf discharge. The modulation was used for controlling radical densities in plasmas which led to a high rate deposition of good quality films. The fairly high deposition rate of 6 Å/s was obtained for a low concentration of 5% SiH4 and a high rf peak power 200 W (0.8 W/cm3) without any appreciable amount of powder particles in the reaction chamber. The optical gap of the films was 1.8–1.95 eV. Emission intensities of HeI 388.9 nm and SiH 413.5 nm linearly increased with rf peak power and were well correlated with the deposition rate.