Characteristics of dual-frequency capacitively coupled SF_6/O_2 plasma and plasma texturing of multi-crystalline silicon

Due to it being environmentally friendly, much attention has been paid to the dry plasma texturing technique serving as an alternative candidate for multicrystalline silicon （mc-Si） surface texturing. In this paper, capacitively coupled plasma （CCP） driven by a dual frequency （DF） of 40.68 MHz and 13.56 MHz is first used for plasma texturing of mc-Si with SF6/O2 gas mixture. Using a hairpin resonant probe and optical emission techniques, DF-CCP characteristics and their influence on mc-silicon surface plasma texturing are investigated at different flow rate ratios, pressures, and radio-frequency （RF） input powers. Experimental results show that suitable plasma texturing of mc-silicon occurs only in a narrow range of plasma parameters, where electron density ne must be larger than 6.3 x 109 cm-3 and the spectral intensity ratio of the F atom to that of the O atom （[F]/[O]） in the plasma must be between 0.8 and 0.3. Out of this range, no cone-like structure is formed on the mc-silicon surface. In our experiments, the lowest reflectance of about 7.3% for mc-silicon surface texturing is obtained at an [F]/[O] of 0.5 and ne of 6.9 × 109 cm-3.

Effects of various substrate materials on structural and optical properties of amorphous silicon nitride thin films deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition

The plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition(PECVD)technique is well suited for fabricating optical filters with continuously variable refractive index profiles;however,it is not clear how the optical and structural properties of thin films differ when deposited on different substrates.Herein,silicon nitride films were deposited on silicon,fused silica,and glass substrates by PECVD,using silane and ammonia,to investigate the effects of the substrate used on the optical properties and structures of the films.All of the deposited films were amorphous.Further,the types and amounts of Si-centered tetrahedral Si–SivN4-v bonds formed were based upon the substrates used;Si–N4 bonds with higher elemental nitrogen content were formed on Si substrates,which lead to obtaining higher refractive indices,and the Si–SiN3 bonds were mainly formed on glass and fused silica substrates.The refractive indices of the films formed on the different substrates had a maximum difference of0.05(at 550 nm),the refractive index of SiNx films formed on silicon substrates was 1.83,and the refractive indices of films formed on glass were very close to those formed on fused silica.The deposition rates of these SiNx films are similar,and the extinction coefficients of all the films were lower than 10-4.

Secondary electron emission yield from vertical graphene nanosheets by helicon plasma deposition

The secondary electron emission yields of materials depend on the geometries of their surface structures.In this paper,a method of depositing vertical graphene nanosheet(VGN)on the surface of the material is proposed,and the secondary electron emission(SEE)characteristics for the VGN structure are studied.The COMSOL simulation and the scanning electron microscope(SEM)image analysis are carried out to study the secondary electron yield(SEY).The effect of aspect ratio and packing density of VGN on SEY under normal incident condition are studied.The results show that the VGN structure has a good effect on suppressing SEE.