Amorphous-to-nanocrystalline transition in silicon thin films by hydrogen diluted silane using PE-CVD method
: Herein, we report effect of variation of hydrogen flow rate on properties of Si:H films synthesized using PE-CVD method. Raman spectroscopy analysis show increase in crystalline volume fraction and crystallite size implying that hydrogen flow in PECVD promote the growth of crystallinity in nc-Si:H films with an expense of reduction in deposition rate. FTIR spectroscopy analysis indicates that hydrogen content in the film increases with increase in hydrogen flow rate and hydrogen is predominantly incorporated in Si-H2 and (Si-H2)n bonding configuration. The optical band gap determined using E04 method and Tauc method (ETauc) show increasing trend with increase in hydrogen flow rate and E04 is found higher than ETauc over the entire range of hydrogen flow rate studied. We also found that the defect density and Urbach energy also increases with increase in hydrogen flow rate. Photosensitivity (Photo /Dark) decreases from 103 to 1 when hydrogen flow rate increased from 30 sccm to 100 sccm and can attributed to amorphous-to-nanocrystallization transition in Si:H films. The results obtained from the present study demonstrated that hydrogen flow rate is an important deposition parameter in PE-CVD to synthesize nc-Si:H films.