Influence of atomic hydrogen annealing on the optical properties of vacuum-deposited a-Si:H films

The influence of atomic hydrogen annealing on the optical parameters of a-Si:H films was studied using spectrophotometric measurements of the film transmittance and reflectance in the wavelength range 200-3000 nm. In this annealing, the deposition of a thin layer and treatment with atomic hydrogen were repeated alternately, where the thickness of the thin cyclic layer, d_cyc, and the treatment time of each cycle, t_ca, were kept fixed for each sample. A series of different samples with average thickness of 0.5 μm and different d_cyc and t_ca were prepared. It was found that the refractive index, n, and the optical energy gap, E_g, increase as the treatment time, t_ca, increases from 0 to 60 s, while at t_ca=120 s both n and E_g decrease. Also, both the refractive index and the optical energy gap decrease with increasing the relative diffusion length of hydrogen, √t_ca/d_cyc from 0.39 to 0.77. The widening of E_g is due to the structural relaxation resulting from impingement of atomic hydrogen on the growing surface. Thus, a good-quality a-Si:H with Urbach parameter 65 mev and optical energy gap of 1.78 eV was successfully prepared.