Mechanical and piezoresistive properties of thin silicon films deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition and hot-wire chemical vapor deposition at low substrate temperatures

This paper reports on the mechanical and piezoresistance characterization of hydrogenated amorphous and nanocrystalline silicon thin films deposited by hot-wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) and radio-frequency plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) using substrate temperatures between 100 and 250 degrees C. The microtensile technique is used to determine film properties such as Young's modulus, fracture strength and Weibull parameters, and linear and quadratic piezoresistance coefficients obtained at large applied stresses. The 95%-confidence interval for the elastic constant of the films characterized, 85.9 +/- 0.3 GPa, does not depend significantly on the deposition method or on film structure. In contrast, mean fracture strength values range between 256 +/- 8 MPa and 600 +/- 32 MPa: nanocrystalline layers are slightly stronger than their amorphous counterparts and a pronounced increase in strength is observed for films deposited using HWCVD when compared to those grown by PECVD. Extracted Weibull moduli are below 10. In terms of piezoresistance, n-doped radio-frequency nanocrystalline silicon films deposited at 250 degrees C present longitudinal piezoresistive coefficients as large as -(2.57 +/- 0.03) x 10(-10) Pa-1 with marginally nonlinear response. Such values approach those of crystalline silicon and of polysilicon layers deposited at much higher temperatures. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4736548]