TEOS-PECVD system for high growth rate deposition of SiO2 films

The Plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) system has been developed for the deposition of doped and undoped silicon dioxide (SiO2) films at high growth rates. The deposition chamber with symmetric parallel plate reactor has been designed and fabricated on the basis of some assumptions. The process parameters have been optimized for the growth of SiO2 films. The films were deposited by present PECVD system using tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) as a source of Si and characterized by ellipsometery and FTIR spectroscopy. The comparative study of reactor geometry, process parameters and growth rate of present system with that of the PECVD systems reported in the literature has been presented. The growth rate obtained by our home-made system has found to be higher than that of the other reported PECVD systems. The positions of the characteristic peaks of the FTIR spectra, of the SiO2 films deposited by the present system have also been compared with that of the other systems and consistency has been observed, which proves the validity of the system. From comparison and experimental results it is revealed that the present PECVD system proved to yield high growth rates for the deposition of good-quality SiO2 films with higher thickness essential for optoelectronics applications.