Highly conductive hydrogenated microcrystalline cubic silicon carbide films deposited by hot wire CVD at a low substrate temperature on glass substrates

N-type highly conductive hydrogenated microcrystalline cubic silicon carbide (mu c-3C-SiC:H) films were successfully deposited by hot wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) at a low substrate temperature (similar to 300 degrees C). We employed phosphine (PH3) and hexamethyldisilazane (HMDS) as phosphorous and nitrogen source materials, respectively. For the phosphorous doped films, we obtained dark conductivity (sigma(d)) of 3.2x10(-2) S/cm and activation energy of the dark conductivity (Ea) of 86 meV. For the nitrogen doped films, the sigma(d) and E-a were found to be 5.32 S/cm and 25 meV, respectively. These results indicates that doping with HMDS is effective to obtain highly conductive mu c-3C-SiC:H films. We also fabricated n-type mu c-3CSiC:H(doped with HMDS)/p-type crystalline silicon heterojunction diodes in order to investigate junction properties. The diodes showed good rectifying characteristics. These results suggest that nitrogen doped mu c-3C-SiC:H films are promising for the doped layer of silicon based solar cells.