Study on catalytic chemical vapor deposition method to prepare hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Abstract

A new type of thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method is presented. In the method, material gases are decomposed by catalytic or pyrolytic reaction with a heated catalyzer, so that films can be deposited at temperatures less than 300 °C without any plasma or photochemical excitation, and the method is particularly called ‘‘Catalytic-CVD.’’ Hydrogenated amorphous silicon films are deposited by this method, and the deposition mechanism is also investigated. It is found that device-quality amorphous silicon films can be obtained and that inactive species, which are generated at the catalyzer and transported without gas-phase reactions, are key species to make a high-quality film by this method.