Deposition temperature effects on the characteristics of a-Si:H deposited by pulsed DC magnetron sputteringcharacteristic

International audienceIn this study, the deposition temperature effects on the properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon films are reported. The a-Si:H thin films were deposited by DC magnetron sputtering technique, according to a new protocol of deposition. This last consists of a successively several thin layers deposition separated by a relaxation time between them without stopping plasma (a layer by layer procedure). The a-Si:H samples elaborated at various deposition temperatures are characterized by a rather high microstructure parameter (ranging between 0.23 and 0.77), indicating that most of hydrogen incorporated into the films is in the form of dihydride bonds. An important increase in the proportion of the polyhydride complexes might favor the porous character of the material and therefore a decrease of its compactness. Otherwise, in the range of deposition temperature 300-400 °C, the microstructural parameters R2000, R2090 and the dark conductivity d present a particular evolution. Indeed, the earlier studies in our laboratory showed that the layers deposited according to the usual protocol, remain always amorphous until temperatures lower than 600 °C, we thus arrived at temperatures less significant (350 °C) to make a beginning of crystallization