Laser annealing study of PECVD deposited hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbon alloy films

The influence of carbon content on the crystallization process has been investigated for the excimer laser annealed hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbon alloy films deposited by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD) technique, using silane methane gas mixture diluted in helium, as well as for the hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon carbon alloy films prepared by PECVD from silane methane gas mixture highly diluted in hydrogen, for comparison. The study demonstrates clearly that the increase in the carbon content prevents the crystallization process in the hydrogen diluted samples while the crystallization process is enhanced in the laser annealing of amorphous samples because of the increase in the absorbed laser energy density that occurs for the amorphous films with the higher carbon content. This, in turn, facilitates the crystallization for the laser annealed samples with higher carbon content, resulting in the formation of SiC crystallites along with Si crystallites. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.