Growth of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) on patterned substrates for increased mechanical stability
Residual stress in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) film, which causes substrate bending and delamination, is studied. The internal stress can be reduced by controlling deposition parameters, but it is known to produce a trade-off between stress and electronic quality. Selective area deposition, in which the deposition area is reduced by making islands, reduced the stress when the lateral dimension of the islands becomes comparable to the film thickness. The overall stress is reduced by approximately 40% when the lateral dimension is decreased to 40 {mu}m, but the adhesion was not improved much. However, substrates having a 2-dimensional array of inversed pyramids of 200 {mu}m in lateral dimension produced overall stress 3 {approximately} 4 times lower than that on the normal substrates. Such substrates were prepared by anisotropic etching of silicon wafers. The inversed pyramid structure also has other advantages including minimized delamination and increased effective thickness. Computer simulation confirmed that the overall stress can be reduced by deposition on the pyramidal structure.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC03-76SF00098
- OSTI ID:
- 10118610
- Report Number(s):
- LBL-36398; CONF-941144-64; ON: DE95006589; TRN: 95:002548
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Fall meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS),Boston, MA (United States),28 Nov - 9 Dec 1994; Other Information: PBD: Dec 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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