High-rate and wide-area deposition of epitaxial Si films by mesoplasma chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

Homoepitaxial Si films have been deposited at a high rate of 200 nm s−1 over a wide area of 20 mm × 80 mm by cluster-assisted mesoplasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) on a moving substrate. The obtained epitaxial Si films exhibited a uniform roughness of 0.1–0.3 nm (1 × 1 μm2) and a Hall mobility of ∼240 cm2 V−1 s−1. The results suggested that under the MPCVD the deposition precursors formed at the plasma edge could be small enough not to influence either epitaxial film structure or the film quality provided the substrate temperature is maintained above 500 °C.

In situ annealing and high-rate silicon epitaxy on porous silicon by mesoplasma process

“…[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] In this process, highrate and large-area Si epitaxy can be obtained by moving the substrate. 17) In addition, mesoplasma has a high number density of atomic hydrogen, 18,19) which is considered to be favorable for porous Si annealing. 20) In this study, therefore, we employed mesoplasma to investigate the annealing of porous Si and also the Si epitaxial growth on porous Si substrate.…”

Improved production yield in silicon epitaxy by reducing pressure in mesoplasma chemical vapor deposition

“…Therefore, because of the high stability of the silicon-containing chloride gas constituents, such as SiCl 4 , the deposition yield of Si with this approach is limited by thermodynamics to less than 30%. In contrast to this approach, by employing mesoplasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD), [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] epitaxial Si films with a reasonably high Hall mobility of >200 cm 2 0V ¹1 0s ¹1 have been deposited at rates as fast as 700 nm/s, attaining a material yield as high as ³50% at the same time. 9) This is made possible partly because silicon chloride gases become unstable while Si vapor instead becomes the most stable among the Si-containing gas species at high temperature under mesoplasma conditions.…”

“…10) To determine the absolute density of H(n = 2) from the measured signals, the effective light absorption path length over which H(n = 2) is present was assumed to be 4 cm: the size of the spatial distribution of the intensities of the H I emissions after Abel inversion. 11) The thickness of the films was measured using a surface profiler (KLA-Tencor P-10). The phases presented in the films were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD; M18XHF-SRA).…”