Growth of hydrogenated amorphous silicon due to controlled ion bombardment from a pure silane plasma

Abstract
The growth process, optical and structural properties of a-Si:H films deposited from a silane multipole dc discharge are analyzed by real time and spectroscopic ellipsometry, and ir absorption spectroscopy. Films deposited mainly from neutral polymerized species are systematically compared to films deposited from monomeric ionic species at various ion incident energy up to 100-eV. An increase of ion bombardment energy is shown to favor the formation of high density homogeneous and isotropic films.