Characteristics of dual-frequency capacitively coupled SF6/O2 plasma and plasma texturing of multi-crystalline silicon

Abstract

Due to it being environmentally friendly, much attention has been paid to the dry plasma texturing technique serving as an alternative candidate for multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) surface texturing. In this paper, capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) driven by a dual frequency (DF) of 40.68 MHz and 13.56 MHz is first used for plasma texturing of mc-Si with SF6/O2 gas mixture. Using a hairpin resonant probe and optical emission techniques, DF-CCP characteristics and their influence on mc-silicon surface plasma texturing are investigated at different flow rate ratios, pressures, and radio-frequency (RF) input powers. Experimental results show that suitable plasma texturing of mc-silicon occurs only in a narrow range of plasma parameters, where electron density ne must be larger than 6.3 × 109 cm−3 and the spectral intensity ratio of the F atom to that of the O atom ([F]/[O]) in the plasma must be between 0.8 and 0.3. Out of this range, no cone-like structure is formed on the mc-silicon surface. In our experiments, the lowest reflectance of about 7.3% for mc-silicon surface texturing is obtained at an [F]/[O] of 0.5 and ne of 6.9 × 109 cm−3.