Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 February 2011
Using a “macro-trench” technique, the surface reaction probabilities β of the a-Si:H growth precursors for remote hollow cathode silane discharge (HC) and reactive magnetron sputter deposition (RMS) are measured. Both deposition methods produce state of the art photo-electronic quality a-Si:H. For the HC case, β= 0.28 ± 0.05, whereas for RMS deposition β ≈ 0.97 ± 0.05. We conclude that β is not universally correlated with film quality, and discuss mitigating factors present in RMS deposition that permit high quality film to be deposited despite the high film precursor reactivity.