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The RTCVD 160 Silicon Deposition System

The system The RTCVD 160 is a tool for depositing silicon layers from the gas phase using atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition. We designed it for the purposes of R&D, especially for coating rectangular substrates up to 125 mm in width. Depending on substrate and process conditions, the silicon layer either grows epitaxially or polycrystalline. Due to the innovative arrangement of the substrates only little parasitic deposition occurs on the quartz parts of the reactor, thus leading to a very high silicon conversion efficiency.
Front view of the RTCVD 160.

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Our RTCVD 160 system is very compact and consists of only few, robust parts. A lamp powered cold-wall furnace heats the substrates, which are fixed in a quartz carrier located within a quartz tube. Two thyristor units provide enough power to reach process temperatures up to 1300 C. The main process gas trichlorosilane is stored in a bottle inside the RTCVD 160. It gets mixed with hydrogen and dopant gases in a gas mixture panel, which also provides etch gases and purge gases to the reactor. Deposition processes as well as safety loops are being controlled by a programmable logic controller. We have defined a very convenient control software called MODVIS. It runs on a standard personal computer, and allows the user to create his own recipes for all thinkable layer compositions.

Applications One of the strengths of the RTCVD 160 is its great variability in substrate geometry. Since the substrate carrier is a completely modular, exchangeable part of the system, substrates of nearly all sizes and shapes can be coated. The only constraints are diameter of the reactor tube and length of the furnace, which limit the maximum substrate size to about 300 mm in length and 125 mm in width. In the basic version, we designed the carrier for coating substrates of 100 mm in width and up to 300 mm in length at 2 mm thickness at most. The primary application of the RTCVD 160 is silicon epitaxy on crystalline silicon surfaces, with layer thicknesses ranging from about 5 to 100 m. Coating of amorphous surfaces with polycrystalline silicon of the same thickness range is the second application we designed the system for. The large flexibility of the reactor makes the RTCVD 160 the optimum deposition tool for all R&D applications.

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE Heidenhofstr. 2 79110 Freiburg Germany Tel.: +49 (0) 7 61/45 88-0 Fax: +49 (0) 7 61/45 88-90 00 www.ise.fhg.de

Coordination Crystalline Silicon Thin-Film Solar Cells Dr Stefan Reber Tel.: +49 (0) 7 61/45 88-52 48 Fax: +49 (0) 7 61/45 88-92 48 Stefan.Reber@ise.fhg.de

April 2003

The RTCVD 160 Silicon Deposition System

Technical Data Process - process gases: SiHCl3, H2, B2H6, PH3, purge gas N2, etch gas HCl - process temperature: 850-1300 C - deposition rate: 1-5 m/min - silicon conversion efficiency: up to 50% - layer quality: electronic grade, efficiency of thin-film solar cell in epitaxial layer up to 17.6% has been demonstrated (RTCVD 100) Furnace and power supply - 2 vertical lamp fields 400 x 250 mm2 - 15 linear halogen lamps per field, filament length 250 mm, 4.5 kVA at 400 V per lamp - anodized aluminum, inner side mirrored, water cooled - 2 thyristor insertions, 6 thyristors each - each lamp pair individually controllable Gas mixture panel - H2 bubbling of SiHCl3 - pneumatic and manual valves - mass flow controllers or mass flow meters for each gas - gas stabilization to exhaust - best quality components Process control and safety devices - PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) controlled by PC software - modular, user defined recipes - data logging during process run - process protocol generator - hydrogen / hydride sensors - thermo switches - reactor over pressure monitoring Reactor and substrate carrier - all quartz material - reactor tube 160 mm outer diameter, 1300 mm length - substrate carrier: - modular setup - for 2 substrate rows of approx. - 100 x 300 mm2 size - gas pre-heating section - optional: gas shower inlet - quick substrate carrier loading and unloading Dimensions and supplies - system height x width x depth: approx. 1900 x 2200 x 900 mm3 - power: 3-phase 400 V, 50 Hz, 70 kVA - cooling water ~30 l/min at 18 C - process and standby gases, CDA

The gas mixture panel plays a crucial role for the quality of the silicon layer. Therefore we only use materials and components of highest quality. All gas flows are either controlled or measured by mass flow meters or mass flow controllers, respectively.

The substrate carrier is made from quartz and provides space for 2 rows of three 100 x 100 mm2 wafers each. Spacing between the rows can be varied from 6 to 18 mm. A gas pre-heating section combined with a gas shower allows optimum gas conditioning.

Graphical user interface of the MODVIS process control software. Multiple layers deposited at user-defined process conditions can be predefined for reproducible process runs. All mass flow data and temperature data are logged and can be printed in a process protocol.

Furnace of the RTCVD 160. 15 linear halogen lamps on each vertical lamp field provide enough light to heat up the substrates to 1300 C. 12 fans keep the temperature of the lamps low, the furnace body itself is water cooled.

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