• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.52-52
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• 2011

A novel deposition process for n-type nanocrystalline silicon (n-type nc-Si) thin films at room temperature has been developed by adopting the neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBa-CVD). During formation of n-type nc-Si thin film by the NBa-CVD process with silicon reflector electrode at room temperature, the energetic particles could induce enhance doping efficiency and crystalline phase in polymorphous-Si thin films without additional heating on substrate; The dark conductivity and substrate temperature of P-doped polymorphous~nano crystalline silicon thin films increased with increasing the reflector bias. The NB energy heating substrate(but lower than $80^{\circ}C$ and increase doping efficiency. This low temperature processed doped nano-crystalline can address key problem in applications from flexible display backplane thin film transistor to flexible solar cell.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.171-171
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• 2012

Neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBa-CVD) process has been developed as a nove,l room temperature deposition process for the light-soaking free nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin films including intrinsic and n-type doped thin film. During formation of nc-Si thin films by the NBa-CVD process with silicon reflector at room temperature, the energetic particles enhance doping efficiency and crystalline phase in nc-Si thin films without additional heating at substrate. The effects of incident NB energy controlled by the reflector bias have been confirmed by Raman spectra analysis. Additionally, TEM images show uniform nc-Si grains which imbedded amorphous phase without incubation layer. The nc-Si films by the NBa-CVD are hardly degenerated by light soaking; the degradations of photoconductivity were just a few percents before and after light irradiation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.253-253
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• 2012

Low temperature SiOx film process has being required for both silicon and oxide (IGZO) based low temperature thin film transistor (TFT) for application of flexible display. In recent decades, from low density and high pressure such as capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) type plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) to the high density plasma and low pressure such as inductively coupled plasma (ICP) and electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) have been used to researching to obtain high quality silicon oxide (SiOx) thin film at low temperature. However, these plasma deposition devices have limitation of controllability of process condition because process parameters of plasma deposition such as RF power, working pressure and gas ratio influence each other on plasma conditions which non-leanly influence depositing thin film. In compared to these plasma deposition devices, neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBaCVD) has advantage of independence of control parameters. The energy of neutral beam (NB) can be controlled independently of other process conditions. In this manner, we obtained NB dependent high crystallized intrinsic and doped silicon thin film at low temperature in our another papers. We examine the properties of the low temperature processed silicon oxide thin films which are fabricated by the NBaCVD. NBaCVD deposition system consists of the internal inductively coupled plasma (ICP) antenna and the reflector. Internal ICP antenna generates high density plasma and reflector generates NB by auger recombination of ions at the surface of metal reflector. During deposition of silicon oxide thin film by using the NBaCVD process with a tungsten reflector, the energetic Neutral Beam (NB) that controlled by the reflector bias believed to help surface reaction. Electrical and structural properties of the silicon oxide are changed by the reflector bias, effectively. We measured the breakdown field and structure property of the Si oxide thin film by analysis of I-V, C-V and FTIR measurement.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.154-155
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• 2012

The promise of nano-crystalites (nc) as a technological material, for applications including display backplane, and solar cells, may ultimately depend on tailoring their behavior through doping and crystallinity. Impurities can strongly modify electronic and optical properties of bulk and nc semiconductors. Highly doped dopant also effect structural properties (both grain size, crystal fraction) of nc-Si thin film. As discussed in several literatures, P atoms or radicals have the tendency to reside on the surface of nc. The P-radical segregation on the nano-grain surfaces that called self-purification may reduce the possibility of new nucleation because of the five-coordination of P. In addition, the P doping levels of ${\sim}2{\times}10^{21}\;at/cm^3$ is the solubility limitation of P in Si; the solubility of nc thin film should be smaller. Therefore, the non-activated P tends to segregate on the grain boundaries and the surface of nc. These mechanisms could prevent new nucleation on the existing grain surface. Therefore, most researches shown that highly doped nc-thin film by using conventional PECVD deposition system tended to have low crystallinity, where the formation energy of nucleation should be higher than the nc surface in the intrinsic materials. If the deposition technology that can make highly doped and simultaneously highly crystallized nc at low temperature, it can lead processes of next generation flexible devices. Recently, we are developing a novel CVD technology with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, named as neutral beam assisted CVD (NBaCVD), which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at low temperatures. During the formation of the nc-/pm-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. In the case of phosphorous doped Si thin films, the doping efficiency also increased as increasing the reflector bias (i.e. increasing NPB energy). At 330V of reflector bias, activation energy of the doped nc-Si thin film reduced as low as 0.001 eV. This means dopants are fully occupied as substitutional site, even though the Si thin film has nano-sized grain structure. And activated dopant concentration is recorded as high as up to 1020 #/$cm^3$ at very low process temperature (＜ $80^{\circ}C$) process without any post annealing. Theoretical solubility for the higher dopant concentration in Si thin film for order of 1020 #/$cm^3$ can be done only high temperature process or post annealing over $650^{\circ}C$. In general, as decreasing the grain size, the dopant binding energy increases as ratio of 1 of diameter of grain and the dopant hardly be activated. The highly doped nc-Si thin film by low-temperature NBaCVD process had smaller average grain size under 10 nm (measured by GIWAXS, GISAXS and TEM analysis), but achieved very higher activation of phosphorous dopant; NB energy sufficiently transports its energy to doping and crystallization even though without supplying additional thermal energy. TEM image shows that incubation layer does not formed between nc-Si film and SiO2 under later and highly crystallized nc-Si film is constructed with uniformly distributed nano-grains in polymorphous tissues. The nucleation should be start at the first layer on the SiO2 later, but it hardly growth to be cone-shaped micro-size grains. The nc-grain evenly embedded pm-Si thin film can be formatted by competition of the nucleation and the crystal growing, which depend on the NPB energies. In the evaluation of the light soaking degradation of photoconductivity, while conventional intrinsic and n-type doped a-Si thin films appeared typical degradation of photoconductivity, all of the nc-Si thin films processed by the NBaCVD show only a few % of degradation of it. From FTIR and RAMAN spectra, the energetic hydrogen NB atoms passivate nano-grain boundaries during the NBaCVD process because of the high diffusivity and chemical potential of hydrogen atoms.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.254-255
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• 2012

Interest in nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) thin films has been growing because of their favorable processing conditions for certain electronic devices. In particular, there has been an increase in the use of nc-Si thin films in photovoltaics for large solar cell panels and in thin film transistors for large flat panel displays. One of the most important material properties for these device applications is the macroscopic charge-carrier mobility. Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) or nc-Si is a basic material in thin film transistors (TFTs). However, a-Si:H based devices have low carrier mobility and bias instability due to their metastable properties. The large number of trap sites and incomplete hydrogen passivation of a-Si:H film produce limited carrier transport. The basic electrical properties, including the carrier mobility and stability, of nc-Si TFTs might be superior to those of a-Si:H thin film. However, typical nc-Si thin films tend to have mobilities similar to a-Si films, although changes in the processing conditions can enhance the mobility. In polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin films, the performance of the devices is strongly influenced by the boundaries between neighboring crystalline grains. These grain boundaries limit the conductance of macroscopic regions comprised of multiple grains. In much of the work on poly-Si thin films, it was shown that the performance of TFTs was largely determined by the number and location of the grain boundaries within the channel. Hence, efforts were made to reduce the total number of grain boundaries by increasing the average grain size. However, even a small number of grain boundaries can significantly reduce the macroscopic charge carrier mobility. The nano-crystalline or polymorphous-Si development for TFT and solar cells have been employed to compensate for disadvantage inherent to a-Si and micro-crystalline silicon (${\mu}$-Si). Recently, a novel process for deposition of nano-crystralline silicon (nc-Si) thin films at room temperature was developed using neutral beam assisted chemical vapor deposition (NBaCVD) with a neutral particle beam (NPB) source, which controls the energy of incident neutral particles in the range of 1~300 eV in order to enhance the atomic activation and crystalline of thin films at room temperature. In previous our experiments, we verified favorable properties of nc-Si thin films for certain electronic devices. During the formation of the nc-Si thin films by the NBaCVD with various process conditions, NPB energy directly controlled by the reflector bias and effectively increased crystal fraction (~80%) by uniformly distributed nc grains with 3~10 nm size. The more resent work on nc-Si thin film transistors (TFT) was done. We identified the performance of nc-Si TFT active channeal layers. The dependence of the performance of nc-Si TFT on the primary process parameters is explored. Raman, FT-IR and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to study the microstructures and the crystalline volume fraction of nc-Si films. The electric properties were investigated on Cr/SiO2/nc-Si metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors.