Cracking behavior of evaporated amorphous silicon films

The residual stress in amorphous silicon films deposited by evaporation is investigated with different substrate temperatures. The stress measured from all the films studied in this paper is tensile. The level of stress decreases from 580 MPa to 120 MPa with increasing substrate temperature from 60 °C to 350 °C. When the film becomes thicker, strain increases and cracks are formed for stress relaxation. 10 μm thick amorphous Si films are deposited at 350 °C without cracks. This cracking behavior is theoretically studied and confirmed by experiment. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.