Structural and Electronic Properties of Hydrogenated Nanocrystalline Silicon Films Made with Hydrogen Dilution Profiling Technique

Abstract

AbstractWe used X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman scattering and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy to characterize structural and electronic properties of nc-Si:H films made with different hydrogen dilution ratios and hydrogen dilution profiling with continuously reduced hydrogen dilution during the deposition. The XRD results show that the crystalline volume fraction (fc) is in the range of 60-70% with grain size of 22-26 nm for the nc-Si:H films studied. Comparing the sample made using hydrogen dilution profiling to that with constant hydrogen dilution, the hydrogen dilution profiling promotes the (220) preferential orientation due to a very high hydrogen dilution in the initial growth. The Raman results show that the fc is in the range of 60-90%, depending on the sample and excitation wavelength. For the samples with constant hydrogen dilution, the fc measured by Raman increases along the growth direction. The hydrogen dilution profiling reverses this trend, which affirms that the hydrogen profiling controls the nanocrystalline structure evolution along the growth direction. The PL results show only one peak around 0.8-0.9 eV for the samples made with constant hydrogen dilution, but an additional peak at 1.4 eV appears in the sample made with the hydrogen dilution profiling.