By annealing thin hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiCx:H) films deposited by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) on crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers, pn-junctions with very low inverse saturation current can be formed. This has been shown in heterojunction bipolar transistors and solar cells with +/- 400°C for this process. The characterization of these structures indicates that a-SiCx:H films partially re-crystallize during the annealing process forming Si-nanocrystals embedded in the amorphous film. Understanding this process and further improving the pn-junction the study of the re-crystallization process by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) measurements has been done. This paper deals with the characterization of amorphous SiCx/c-Si structures with 100 and 300 nm thickness measured by XRD with the temperature chamber with an annealing process at 900°C. Both intrinsic and phosphorus-doped a-SiCx:H films were deposited on a c-Si substrate p-type of 300um-thickness with crystallographic orientation <100> using the PECVD reactor. From the in-situ measurements using the XDR, the crystallization phase was obtained; this was done by taking the maximum value of intensity at the dominant peak in the orientation <111> and normalization. Fitting this with the Avrami-Mehl-Johnson Theory the incubation as well as the crystallization time were obtained to study the thermally activated process.

Date Published: 25 October 2011
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8011, 22nd Congress of the International Commission for Optics: Light for the Development of the World, 80111O (25 October 2011); doi: 10.1117/12.903268

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8011:
22nd Congress of the International Commission for Optics: Light for the Development of the World
Ramón Rodríguez-Vera; Ramón Rodríguez-Vera; Ramón Rodríguez-Vera; Rufino Díaz-Uribe; Rufino Díaz-Uribe; Rufino Díaz-Uribe, Editor(s)