ELECTRICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF RADIO-FREQUENCY SPUTTERED HYDROGENATEDAMORPHOUS-SILICON CARBIDE FILMS

The electrical results of rf sputtered hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-Si1-xCx:H) films prepared under different sputtering condit ions are presented. It was found that hopping and Poole-Frenkel effect s are the conduction mechanisms for low and high applied fields, respe ctively. From the capacitance versus voltage measurements, the fixed c harge density (Q(f)) and the interface trapped charge density (D-it) w ere found to be in the range of 5.5-6.81 X 10(10) cm(-2) and 5-13 X 10 (11) eV(-1) cm(-2), respectively. D-it decreases with either an increa se in the total sputtering pressure, the partial hydrogen pressure or the substrate temperature, but increases with an increase in the rf sp uttering power. The decrease in D-it was found to be closely related t o the increase in the number of silicon-hydrogen bonds. (C) 1997 Ameri can Institute of Physics.