A pulsed laser ablation/plasma chemical vapor deposition tandem system for combinatorial device fabrication

In electronic device fabrication, we frequently encounter the situations to deposit thin films of semiconductors, ceramics, and metals sequentially. Since the appropriate methods for depositing these films are frequently different, it should be beneficial for the research of new devices to develop a system that enables the depositions of different films not only sequentially but also in parallel by the procedure as prescribed. In this paper, we report on a tandem system composed of a pulsed laser deposition (PLD) and two plasma chemical vapor deposition (PCVD) chambers and its application in the fabrication of a prototype structure directed towards the field effect a-Si:H solar cell. PLD and PCVD were used to deposit conductive and semiconductive/insulative film layers, respectively. An exchangeable masking scheme was designed and installed in the system so we could make several device structures in parallel and quickly optimize the device and process parameters by the combinatorial methodology.