Optical emission spectroscopy study on deposition process of silicon carbide thin films

Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) is applied to monitor the plasma behaviour during the deposition process of silicon carbide films in a very high frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition. The OES intensities for molecular radicals such as SiH*, CH* and atomic hydrogen lines were monitored throughout the process. By varying the discharge power, increasing power shows increasing OES intensities for aU species. The intensity ratio ISiH*/ICH* were found to have similar trend with crystalline volume fraction Xc of the films which suggest an influence of OES intensities with the output Xc of the films.