„Plasma – assisted synthesis of silicon – based materials of different composition and structure”

In this presentation, the most recent research activities carried out at the Materials and Microsystems Laboratory (ChiLab) of Politecnico di Torino in the field of plasma-assisted synthesis of silicon-based thin-film materials and their application, are reviewed. The main plasma-assisted techniques used for the material synthesis, namely plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), electron cyclotron resonance chemical vapor deposition (ECR_CVD), as well as reactive magnetron sputtering, are described, analyzing the characteristics that make them especially suitable for the production of silicon-based materials with a very wide range of compositions and physical properties. Moreover, some examples of silicon-based thin-film materials and structures grown by these techniques are presented, including amorphous thin film alloys such as a-SiOx, a-SiNx, a-SiOxNy:H, a-SiOxCy:H, a-SiCxOyNz:H, microcrystalline Si, microcystalline SiC and mixed phase mc-Si/a-SiC.