An optical emission study of the glow-discharge deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon from argon-silane mixtures

Abstract

Optical emission intensities from atomic silicon and argon and molecular hydrogen have been measured in silane-argon mixture glow discharges as a function of silane percentage and rf voltage. These measurements show that the electron concentration decreases and the average electron energy increases as the silane concentration increases. This dependence explains why the deposition rate of hydrogenated amorphous silicon from silane-noble gas mixtures is not proportional to the silane concentration.