Low-temperature deposition of weakly-stressed nanocrystalline silicon films by reactive magnetron sputtering

¹ Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, 1060 Tunis, Tunisia
² SIFCOM-ISMRA, UMR 6176, 6 Bd Maréchal Juin, 14050 Caen Cedex, France
³ Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée, 33 rue Saint-Leu, 80039 Amiens, France
⁴ Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, 5600 Cottle Road, San Jose 95193, California, USA
⁵ Faculté des Sciences de Bizerte, 7021 Zarzouna, Bizerte, Tunisia

Corresponding author: Kacem.Zellama@sc.u-picardie.fr

Received: 12 March 2004
Revised: 28 June 2004
Accepted: 4 August 2004
Published online: 21 December 2004

Abstract

We discuss the fabrication and characterization of undoped hydrogenated and crystallized silicon thin films grown by reactive magnetron sputtering at growth rate of about 2 Å/s and at a temperature as low as 100 °C for various ratios of hydrogen dilution in the gas phase mixture (argon + x% hydrogen). Combined infrared absorption and Raman scattering spectroscopy techniques as well as conventional and high resolution transmission electron microscopy and stress measurements are used to fully characterize the films. In this temperature range, a minimum hydrogen dilution of 30% with respect to the plasma mixture (argon + hydrogen) is necessary to produce nanocrystalline films with crystalline volume fraction of about 65%. Moreover, these films are found to promote much lower stress intensity than those reported in previous works. The nature and strength of the stresses are dependent on the film microstructure.