Maskless and contactless patterned silicon deposition using a localized PECVD process

Abstract

We present a novel technique to perform contactless and mask-free patterned plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition and etching. When a powered electrode with narrow slits is placed very close to the substrate, plasma is selectively ignited within the slits due to the hollow cathode effect, and so deposition or etching occurs only within an area smaller than the size of the slit. This technique is demonstrated through the deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon using a gas mixture of hydrogen, argon and silane. Slits as small as 1 mm generate a plasma, and for this width, the lines deposited are about 750 μm wide, homogenous over their length (60 mm), and are deposited at a rate of 50 nm min−1. The phenomenon is studied using 2D Particle In Cell (PIC) modelling with a simplified argon chemistry. The electron localization observed in the PIC modelling provides an explanation of why the deposition is narrower than the slit.

Role of H3 + ions in deposition of silicon thin films from SiH4/H2 discharges: modeling and experiments

“…Modelling of silane-based plasmas has been widely applied to understand the plasma chemistry and to determine the con-tribution of different species to the growth [6][7][8][9]. However, most of these studies are related to the low-pressure conditions and are not representative of the high pressure regime in which we are interested in for the deposition of polymorphous silicon thin films on glass substrates and epitaxial growth on c-Si [10][11][12].…”

A Contactless Patterned Plasma Processing for Interdigitated Back Contact Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells Fabrication

“…The experiments presented herein were carried out in a single chamber PECVD reactor, which comprises a cylindrical plasma confinement vessel (grounded) surrounding two parallel positioned electrodes: an RF powered electrode and a grounded electrode (where the substrate was placed). As described in [3], the contactless plasma patterning step involves the use of a grooved powered electrode, as shown in Fig. 1 (a).…”

“…1 (c). In this work, the plasma process being employed is an NF3/Ar etching, but previous work has shown it to be effective for deposition as well [3].…”

Investigation of dual-frequency effect on the ion energy and flux in Torr-regime plasma by a two-dimensional GPU-PIC simulation

“…Depending on the deposition target, a high process temperature may be required, but it is difficult to perform such a process using chemical vapor deposition. PECVDs have been widely used to obtain high-quality and uniform films in many fields, such as semiconductor processing and display manufacturing [1,2]. CCPs operated with two radio frequencies are used to achieve separate control of * Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.…”