Application of laser induced electron impact ionization to the deposition chemistry in the hot-wire chemical vapor deposition process with SiH4-NH3 gas mixtures.

The application of a laser-induced electron impact (LIEI) ionization source in studying the gas-phase chemistry of the SiH(4)/NH(3) hot-wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) system has been investigated. The LIEI source is achieved by directing an unfocused laser beam containing both 118 nm (10.5 eV) vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) and 355 nm UV radiations to the repeller plate in a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Comparison of the LIEI source with the conventional 118 nm VUV single-photon ionization (SPI) method has demonstrated that the intensities of the chemical species with ionization potentials (IP) above 10.5 eV, e.g., H(2), N(2) and He, have been significantly enhanced with the incorporation of the LIEI source. It is found that the SPI source due to the 118 nm VUV light coexists in the LIEI source. This allows simultaneous observations of parent ions with enhanced intensity from VUV SPI and their "fingerprint" fragmentation ions from LIEI. It is, therefore, an effective tool to diagnose the gas-phase chemical species involved with both NH(3) and SiH(4) in the HWCVD reactor. In using the LIEI source to SiH(4), NH(3) and their mixtures, it has been shown that the NH(3) decomposition is suppressed with the addition of SiH(4) molecules. Examination of the NH(3) decomposition percentage and the time to reach the N(2) and H(2) steady-state intensities for various NH(3)/SiH(4) mixtures suggests that the extent of the suppression is enhanced with more SiH(4) content in the mixture. With increasing filament temperatures, the negative effect of SiH(4) becomes less important.