Influence of Charge Effect on the Growth of Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon by the Hot-Wire Chemical Vapor Deposition Technique

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

    Abstract

    We observe at lower substrate temperatures that the scatter in the dark conductivity on hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films grown on insulating substrates (e.g., Corning 7059 glass) by the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition technique (HWCVD) can be five orders of magnitude or more. This is especially true at deposition temperatures below 350 deg. C. However, when we grow the samematerials on substrates with a conductive grid, virtually all of our films have acceptable dark conductivity (< 5 x 10 -10 S/cm) at all deposition temperatures below 425 deg. C. This is in contrast to only about 20% of the materials grown in this same temperature range on insulating substrates having an acceptable dark conductivity. We estimated an average energy of 5 eV electrons reaching thegrowing surface in vacuum, and did additional experiments to see the influence of both the electron flux and the energy of the electrons on the film growth. Although these effects do not seem to be important for growing a-Si:H by HWCVD on conductive substrates, they help us better understand the important parameters for a-Si:H growth, and thus, to optimize these parameters in other applicationsof HWCVD technology.
    Original languageAmerican English
    Number of pages5
    StatePublished - 1998
    Event2nd World Conference on Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion - Vienna, Austria
    Duration: 6 Jul 199810 Jul 1998

    Conference

    Conference2nd World Conference on Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conversion
    CityVienna, Austria
    Period6/07/9810/07/98

    NREL Publication Number

    • NREL/CP-520-23913

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