Deposition of SiOx films with a capacitively-coupled plasma at atmospheric pressure

SiOx films were deposited using a large area capacitively-coupled plasma produced by flowing oxygen and argon between two parallel plate electrodes that were supplied by 13.56 MHz radio frequency (RF) power at atmospheric pressure. Tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) was adopted as the precursor. The effects of the RF power and oxygen flow rate on deposition rate were studied. Both XPS and FT-IR results testified to the temperature effect on film deposition. Reactive gaseous species were obtained by optical emission spectroscopy to reveal the possible process of SiOx film deposition. An interesting feature of the evolution of the 777 nm line of O on the O-2 flow rate is that the O atom could contribute to the deposition process.