Elucidation of microstructure of single-phase microcrystalline silicon based on crystallite size distributions

TL;DR

This study investigates the microstructure evolution of highly crystallized microcrystalline silicon films during growth, revealing how crystallite size distributions and composition change, and demonstrating the importance of bimodal distributions for accurate microstructural analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of crystallite size distributions, including bimodal modeling, to better understand microcrystalline silicon film microstructure evolution.

Findings

Bimodal crystallite size distribution improves microstructure characterization.

Crystallite size and composition vary significantly during film growth.

Microstructural analysis aligns with multiple probing techniques.

Abstract

Highly crystallized undoped hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon films prepared using SiF4-H2 mixture plasma were investigated at various stages of growth employing different microstructural probes. Our self-consistent results elucidate various aspects of the evolution of film microstructure, compositional changes and variations in crystallite size distributions with film growth. Inclusion of a bimodal crystallite size distribution in microstructural data analysis leads to results that are corroborative with those obtained from other microstructural tools, and yields a more physically accurate and coherent description of microcrystalline silicon film microstructure.