A pulsed plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) reactor is used for the preparation of thin polyacetylene films. A theoretical model based on the mass transport characteristics of the reactor is developed in order to correlate with experimentally obtained spatial deposition profiles for the acetylene plasma polymer film deposited within the cylindrical reactor. Utilizing a free radic...

A key process in thin film silicon-based solar cell manufacturing is plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) of the active layers. The deposition process can be monitored in situ by plasma diagnostics. Three types of complementary diagnostics, namely optical emission spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and non-linear extended electron dynamics are applied to an industrial-type PECVD react...

In silicon heterojunction solar cells, the passivation of the crystalline silicon wafer surfaces and fabrication of emitter and back surface field are all performed by intrinsic and doped amorphous silicon thin layers, usually deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). By using in-situ diagnostics during PECVD, it is found that the passivation quality of such layers directl...

Silicon heterojunction solar cells have high opencircuit voltages thanks to excellent passivation of the wafer surfaces by thin intrinsic amorphous silicon (aSi:H) layers deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). By using in-situ plasma diagnostics and ex-situ film characterization, we show that the best a-Si:H films for passivation are produced from deposition regimes clo...

Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) is a versatile technique to obtain vertically densealigned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) at lower temperatures than chemical vapor deposition (CVD). In this work, we used magnetron sputtering to deposit iron layer as a catalyst on silicon wafers. After that, radio frequency (rf) assisted PECVD reactor was used to grow CNTs. They were treated with wate...

Electrospray is the technique to soft-ionize liquids by applying a high electric potential to a liquid meniscus. The liquid meniscus is deformed into a cone [1], and charged species are emitted from its apex. The emission can be solvated ions, charged droplets, or a mix of the two. This low-divergence charged species source can be used in diverse applications such as mass spectrometry, propulsi...

Feasibility Study of Shaped Electrode The objective of this project was a feasibility study of a novel, large-area plasma reactor for thin film production, based on a shaped electrode technique (“lens”) to compensate the standing wave non-uniformity. Cylindrical Test Reactor In the first phase a cylindrical reactor was designed and constructed to show the “proof of principle” of a novel electro...

Si nanowires (NWs) are grown by the vapor–liquid–solid method using Cu–Sn bimetallic catalysts in a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) reactor. The microstructure of NWs is analyzed transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. An amorphous SiO2 region, much larger than native oxide, present on top each crystalline SiNW: SiNWs with diameter below 10 n...