RF bias to suppress post-oxidation of mu c-Si:H films deposited by inductively-coupled plasma using a planar RF resonant antenna

One challenge for microcrystalline silicon (mu c-Si:H) deposition is to achieve high deposition rates while maintaining high quality films. In this work, an inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) is used to deposit mu c-Si:H on glass substrates by means of a novel planar resonant antenna at 13.56 MHz. No particle formation occurs in the low pressure (5 Pa) plasma, but the films suffer post-oxidation. By embedding a 5 MHz RF-biased substrate, films deposited simultaneously with and without RF bias are compared. It is shown that large area, low pressure (5 Pa), particle-free ICP deposition at 1 nm/s of mu c-Si:H films can be obtained without post-oxidation by means of a planar resonant antenna, provided that RF substrate bias is included for independent control of the ion energy. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.