Low-temperature silicon epitaxy is critical for future generation ultralarge scale integrated circuits and silicon-based heterostructures. Remote plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition has been applied to achieve silicon homoepitaxy at temperatures as low as 150 °C, which is believed to be the lowest temperature reported to date. Critical to the process are an in situ remote plasma hydrogen cleaning of the substrate surface in an ultrahigh vacuum growth chamber prior to epitaxy, and substitution of thermal energy by remote plasma excitation via argon metastables and energetic electrons to dissociate silane and increase adatom mobility on the surface of the silicon substrate. Excellent crystallinity with very few defects such as dislocations and stacking faults is observed.

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In this paper the reaction kinetics of Remote Plasma-enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (RPCVD) are investigated. Growth rate characterization has been performed for substrate temperatures of 220 – 400°C, r-f powers from 4 – 8 W, and silane flow rates of 10 – 30 sccm. Growth rate has been found to increase exponentially with r-f power, which is, as yet, unexplained. An approximate square root dependence of growth rate on silane partial pressure agrees with the theory of Claasen et. Al for Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) of silicon from silane with an inert carrier gas. From an Arrhenius plot of the temperature dependence of growth rate, we note a change of slope at ∼300°C which we have attributed to the behavior of hydrogen at the silicon surface.