Optical absorption and Hall effect in (220) and (400) oriented polycrystalline silicon films

Abstract

Carrier transport properties were investigated for polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si:H:F) films fabricated at 300 °C by 100 MHz plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition from gaseous mixture of SiF4 and H2. Analysis of free carrier optical absorption (FCA) revealed that 1 μm thick (400) oriented phosphorus-doped poly-Si:H:F films with a carrier concentration of 5×1019 cm−3 had the average electron mobility in crystalline grains at 40 cm2/V s, while the electron mobility of the (220) oriented phosphorus-doped poly-Si:H:F films was only 12 cm2/V s. These results indicated that (400) oriented poly-Si:H:F films had excellent quality crystalline grains. Analyses of the FCA combined with Hall effect current measurements revealed that the electrical conductivity at grain boundaries of top doped films increased as the underlying film thickness increased from 0 to 280 nm for (400) oriented phosphorus-doped/undoped double layered samples, but grain boundaries still acted as large resistive regions limiting the effective conductivity.