Excellent passivation properties of intrinsic amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiCx:H) films deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition on single-crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers have been obtained. The dependence of the effective surface recombination velocity, Seff, on deposition temperature, total pressure and methane (CH4) to silane (SiH4) ratio has been studied for these films using lifetime measurements made with the quasi-steady-state photoconductance technique. The dependence of the effective lifetime, teff, on the excess carrier density, ¿n, has been measured and also simulated through a physical model based on Shockley–Read–Hall statistics and an insulator/semiconductor structure with fixed charges and band bending. A Seff at the a-SiCx:H/c-Si interface lower than 30¿cm¿s-1 was achieved with optimized deposition conditions. This passivation quality was found to be three times better than that of noncarbonated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films deposited under equivalent conditions.

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