Aluminum doped silicon‐carbon alloys prepared by hot wire chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

AbstractAluminum doped stoichiometric microcrystalline silicon carbide (µc‐SiC:H) thin films deposited by Hot Wire Chemical Vapor Deposition (HWCVD) technique have been studied. Without Al‐doping, highly crystalline µc‐SiC:H thin films prepared from monomethysilane (MMS) and hydrogen are mainly cubic polytype and are unintentionally doped into n‐type. Trimethyaluminum (TMAl) is used as a source of Aluminum. By increasing the TMAl/MMS ratio (rdoping), the dark conductivity of µc‐SiC:H thin film firstly decreases and then increases. This variation indicates the compensation from n‐type to p‐type, which is confirmed by the thermo‐power measurements. It is observed in the infrared spectra that the crystallinity of µc‐SiC:H thin film deceases with increasing rdoping. In order to improve the crystallinity of this conductive p‐type µc‐SiC:H thin film, the effect of deposition pressure (pdepo) has been investigated. With increasing pdepo, the crystallinity is improved and the structure of SiC alloys changes according to the Raman spectra. A maximum dark conductivity of 1.3×10–1 S/cm has been achieved at rdoping = 0.0620 and pdepo = 100 Pa. (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)