Composition and Thickness of RF Sputtered Amorphous Silicon Alloy Films.docVIP

Acta Polytechnica Hungarica Vol. 5, No. 2, 2008 Composition and Thickness of RF Sputtered Amorphous Silicon Alloy Films Tivadar Lohner 1 1 , Miklós Serényi 1,3,* 1 , Dipak K. Basa , Péter Turmezei 3 2 , Nquyen Quoc Khánh , ákos Nemcsics , Péter Petrik 1 1) Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science, P.O.Box 49, H- 1525 Budapest, Hungary 2) 3) Department of Physics, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar-751004, India Institute for Microelectronics and Technology, Budapest Tech, Tavaszmez? utca 15-17, H-1084 Budapest, Hungary *) Corresponding author: e-mail: nemcsics.akos@kvk.bmf.hu Abstract: Because the composition and the thickness of the thin films are very important for the fabrication of the devices, in this study we have undertaken the determination of the composition and the thickness of the RF sputtered amorphous silicon alloy thin films deposited at room temperature under very different preparation conditions by using various techniques. Incorporation of argon is demonstrated in the room temperature deposited films and the thickness of the films measured by different methods such as Rutherford backscattering, spectroscopicellipsometry and step-profiler are found to be in reasonable agreement with each other. Keywords: amorphous Si alloys, Sputtering, RBS, Ellipsometry 1 Introduction Amorphous silicon and silicon based binary alloys have generated a lot of interest both fundamentally and technologically and have assumed great importance in the fabrication of electronic, opto-electronic, photo-voltaic as well as sub-micron devices [1-17]. Low temperature deposition and the precise control of the composition as well as the thickness of the desired films are very much essential for the fabrication of the devices. Low temperature deposition of the thin films is necessary to eliminate the problems like increased probability of defect formation and