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Characterizations of evaporated α-Si thin films for MEMS application

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Abstract

Amorphous silicon (α-Si) thin films are widely used as electrical, optical and mechanical materials mainly synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods such as plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and low pressure chemical vapor deposition. However, the physical vapor deposition ways which are seldom studied may demonstrate a proper choice for the deposition of α-Si thin films as the structural material for micro-electromechanical systems application. One of the CVD methods of e-beam thermal evaporation was used for the deposition of α-Si thin films in this study. All samples of deposited α-Si thin films had smooth surface with the root mean square surface roughness less than 1.6 nm. The α-Si film with a relatively low stress of about 250 MPa was obtained with a film thickness of 500 nm at a deposition rate of 4.7−6.1 Å/s. The film thickness variation of α-Si deposited on a 4 inch white glass had a 0.78 % uniformity. The 150-nm-thick α-Si film showed a good conformality on the patterned 500-nm-thick Mo film and it had a leak current density of 2.8 × 10−3 A/cm2 under a 5 V bias voltage. The film’s Young’s modulus and hardness were extracted by a nano-indenter with values of 71.6 and 7.9 GPa, respectively. Characteristics of evaporated α-Si films and PECVD α-Si:H films were also compared.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61101038) and Sichuan Key Technology R&D Program (No. 2011GZ0220). The authors would like to thank Mr. Nan Zhang for providing the SEM measurement, Mr. Jie Yang and his partner for testing the Young’s modulus and hardness and Mr. Taisong Pan for his help with I-V test.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China

    X. Q. Jiao, R. Zhang, J. Yang, H. Zhong & Y. Shi

  2. China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, No. 29 Research Institute, Chengdu, 610036, China

    X. Y. Chen & J. Shi

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  1. X. Q. Jiao
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Correspondence to X. Q. Jiao.

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Jiao, X.Q., Zhang, R., Yang, J. et al. Characterizations of evaporated α-Si thin films for MEMS application. Appl. Phys. A 116, 621–627 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-013-8200-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-013-8200-7

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