Low temperature deposition of crystalline silicon on glass by hot wire chemical vapor deposition

Although the deposition of crystalline silicon on a glass substrate has been pursued using hot wire chemical vapor deposition or plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition for applications in flat panel displays and solar cells, the process has been only partly successful because of the inevitable formation of an amorphous incubation layer on a glass substrate. Currently, the crystalline silicon films are prepared by depositing an amorphous silicon film on a glass substrate and then crystallizing it by excimer laser annealing (ELA), metal induced crystallization or rapid thermal annealing (RTA). Here we report a new process, which can remove the amorphous incubation layer and thereby deposit crystalline silicon directly on glass using HCl. The intrinsic crystalline silicon film has a conductivity of 3.7×10−5 Scm−1 and the n-type doped crystalline silicon film has the Hall mobility of 15.8 cm2V−1 s−1, whose values are comparable to those prepared by ELA and RTA, respectively.

► We could deposit crystalline Si film directly on a glass substrate.
► The amorphous phase was absent in the crystalline Si film.
► The crystalline Si films show a good electric property.