Back to results
US 5,635,408 AGranted
Method of producing a semiconductor device
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsMasafumi Sano, Keishi Saitoh
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Loading patent…
Loading patent…
AssigneeCanon Kabushiki Kaisha
InventorsMasafumi Sano, Keishi Saitoh
Estimating the term…
A method of producing a semiconductor device including a substrate and a semiconductor region, the semiconductor region including at least one pin structure in the form of a multi-layer structure consisting of a non-single crystal n-type (or p-type) layer containing silicon, a non-single crystal i-type layer containing silicon, and a non-single crystal p-type (or n-type) layer containing silicon, the method being characterized in that it includes a step of performing plasma treatment on the surface of the substrate or the surface of one semiconductor layer, wherein the plasma treatment is performed in an atmosphere including a hydrogen gas and another gas containing silicon atoms without or with very thin deposition of a film onto the surface. In this method, the hydrogen gas ambient is excited into a stable plasma state, and impurities adsorbed on the surface of the chamber wall or contained in the chamber wall are prevented from being incorporated into the semiconductor layers thereby achieving a high performance photovoltaic semiconductor device.
A method of producing a semiconductor device including a substrate and a semiconductor region, said semiconductor region including at least one pin structure in the form of a multi-layer structure consisting of a non-single crystal n-type layer containing silicon, a non-single crystal i-type layer containing silicon, and a non-single crystal p-type layer containing silicon, said method being characterized in that it includes a step of performing plasma treatment on at least one surface selected from the group consisting of the surface of said substrate and surfaces of said semiconductor region, wherein said plasma treatment is performed in an atmosphere including a hydrogen gas and another gas containing silicon atoms without deposition of a film onto said surface;
A method of producing a semiconductor device including a substrate and a semiconductor region in the form of a multi-layer structure comprising non-single semiconductor layers at least one of which has a different conduction type from that of the other layers, said method being characterized in that it includes a step of performing plasma treatment on at least one surface selected from the group consisting of the surface of said substrate and surfaces of said semiconductor region, wherein said plasma treatment is performed in a hydrogen gas ambient including a gas containing silicon atoms whose concentration is selected so that no essential deposition of a film containing silicon atoms occurs wherein the concentration of said gas containing silicon atoms included in the hydrogen gas is in the range from 0.001% to 0.01% relative to the amount of the hydrogen gas.
A method of producing a semiconductor device including a substrate and a semiconductor region, said semiconductor region including at least one pin structure in the form of a multi-layer structure consisting of a non-single crystal n-type layer containing silicon, a non-single crystal i-type layer containing silicon, and a non-single crystal p-type layer containing silicon, said i-type layer including an n/i buffer layer adjacent to said n-type layer and a p/i buffer layer adjacent to said p-type layer, said method being characterized in that it includes a step of performing plasma treatment on at least one surface selected from the group consisting of the surface of said substrate and surfaces of said semiconductor region, wherein said plasma treatment is performed in a hydrogen gas ambient including a gas containing silicon atoms whose concentration is selected so that no essential deposition of a film containing silicon atoms occurs wherein the concentration of said gas containing silicon atoms included in the hydrogen gas containing silicon atoms included in the hydrogen gas is in the range from 0.001% to 0.01% relative to the amount of the hydrogen gas.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.