JPS63213675A - Glow discharge decomposition device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To form a coated film having uniform thickness on a substrate, by forming a gas nozzle in a cylindrical electrode plate so that a film forming gas is blown off in the non-vertical direction to the cylindrical substrate surface, and spiraling the gas with respect to the substrate. CONSTITUTION:The cylindrical electrode plate 2 is coaxially set in a reaction vessel 1 into which a film forming gas is introduced, and a cylindrical film forming substrate 10 is coaxially supported by a carrier 3 in the electrode plate 2. Many nozzles 9a for the film forming gas are uniformly formed in the electrode plate 2 so that the gas is blown off in the non-vertical direction to the substrate surface, and the blown off gas is spiraled downward with the substrate 10 as the axis. By such a constitution, the film forming gas is introduced from an inlet 7, glow discharge is carried out, and the homogeneous coated film is formed in the uniform amt. over the whole surface of the substrate.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a glow discharge decomposition apparatus for producing an electrophotographic photosensitive drum made of, for example, amorphous silicon or amorphous silicon carbide.

[Prior art and its problems]

BACKGROUND ART Electrophotographic photoreceptors having a photoconductive layer made of amorphous silicon have been put into practical use today, and are rapidly penetrating the market due to their excellent wear resistance, heat resistance, photosensitivity, non-pollution properties, and the like.

This electrophotographic photoreceptor is formed by a glow discharge decomposition method, and the photoreceptor is drum-shaped, so that uniform amorphous silicon M (hereinafter amorphous silicon is abbreviated as a-3i) is formed over the circumferential surface of the drum. This causes problems in that the electrophotographic characteristics are not uniform over the entire circumferential surface of the photoreceptor drum, and that the quality of the screen obtained by forming an image is uneven.

This problem will be explained using the glow discharge decomposition apparatus shown in FIGS. 4 and 5 as follows.

That is, FIGS. 4 and 5 are schematic diagrams showing the front and plane views of the glow discharge decomposition apparatus, respectively, in which 1 is a cylindrical reaction vessel, and 2 is a cylindrical glow discharge mold scraper. , 3 is a cylindrical substrate support for setting the film-forming substrate in a predetermined position, and includes a reaction vessel 1, an electrode plate 2
and the substrate support 3 substantially coincide with each other, and the reaction vessel 1 and the electrode plate 2 have upper surfaces la and 2a, respectively, and the reaction vessel 1, the electrode plate 2 and the upper surface 1
a and 2a are electrically connected. Further, a bottom plate 4 is installed in the reaction container 1, a substrate support 3 is formed on the bottom plate 4, and the two are electrically connected, and 5 is an electrode plate 2.
6 is a ring body that electrically insulates the bottom plate 4, and 6 is a cap body that is installed on the substrate support 3 and electrically insulates the substrate support 3 and the upper surface 2a. The introduced high frequency power is applied between the electrode plate 2 and the substrate support 3.

7 is a gas inlet port, 8 is a gas exhaust port, and the a-5t film forming gas is introduced into the reaction vessel 1 via the gas introduction lower, and then a plurality of gas It is ejected toward the substrate support 3 through the ejection port 9 .

When manufacturing an a-Si electrophotographic photoreceptor drum, the drum-shaped substrate 10 is
is attached to the substrate support 3, the substrate 10 is set to a predetermined temperature by the heater 11 formed inside the substrate support 3, and further, when the gas is decomposed by glow discharge between the substrate 10 and the electrode plate 2, An a-5i film is grown on the substrate 10 by vapor phase growth. The gas decomposition residual gas generated along with this vapor phase growth is discharged through the gas exhaust port 8. Note that the arrows in the figure indicate the direction of gas flow.

According to the glow discharge decomposition apparatus using the vapor phase growth method as described above, the gas ejected through the electrode plate 2 is ejected toward the central axis of the electrode plate 2, as shown in FIG. Then, this gas is blown out in a vertical direction toward the surface of the substrate 10.

According to such a gas jetting state, the gas jetting state to the substrate changes depending on the thickness of the electrode plate 2 and the hole diameter of the gas jetting port 9. That is, if the thickness of the electrode plate 2 is small or the hole diameter of the gas jet ports 9 is large, the jetting gas pressure will not reach a sufficient level.
The gas ejection force is not uniform, and therefore an equal amount of gas is not applied to the entire substrate surface, and as a result, the a-Si film obtained by glow discharge decomposition is uniform over the entire substrate surface. A problem arises in that a uniform film thickness distribution is not obtained and uniform electrophotographic characteristics cannot be obtained.

On the other hand, if the thickness of the electrode plate 2 is large or the hole diameter of the gas outlet 9 is small, the gas blown out from the gas outlet 9 will have a relatively large directivity. A relatively large amount of gas is applied to a nearby area on the facing substrate surface, and the substrate temperature at that area tends to decrease. Uniform electrophotographic characteristics cannot be obtained over the entire surface, and a spotty distribution of film formation defects occurs. In addition, the gas flow that is spot-wise applied to the substrate surface is bounced off the surface of the substrate, creating a kind of turbulence, which generates non-uniform active species in the atmosphere over the entire substrate surface. For this reason, the homogeneous a-3i
A film cannot be obtained.

[Purpose of the invention]

Therefore, the present invention has been devised in view of the above, and its purpose is to ensure that the gas flow condition applied to the substrate does not vary depending on the thickness of the electrode plate or the hole diameter of the gas jet port, and is uniform over the entire surface of the substrate. It is an object of the present invention to provide a glow discharge decomposition apparatus that can apply a large amount of gas and thereby obtain uniform characteristics over the entire film formation.

[Means for solving problems]

According to the present invention, a cylindrical electrode plate is installed inside a reaction chamber into which a film-forming gas is introduced, a cylindrical film-forming substrate is installed inside the electrode plate, and these electrode plates and the substrate In a glow discharge decomposition device that decomposes a film-forming gas by glow discharge to form a film on a substrate, the central axes of each of the film-forming gases are substantially aligned, and the film-forming gas is directed in a direction non-perpendicular to the substrate surface. A glow discharge decomposition device is provided, characterized in that a gas ejection means for blowing out is formed on the electrode plate, and the gas is decomposed by glow discharge while spirally rotating around the substrate during film formation.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail by taking as an example a glow discharge decomposition apparatus capable of manufacturing an A-3I photosensitive drum.

FIG. 1 is a schematic plan view of the glow discharge decomposition apparatus of the present invention, and the schematic view showing the front side of this apparatus corresponds to FIG. 4, and FIG. represents the gas flow state at . Note that the same parts in FIG. 1 as in FIGS. 4 and 5 are given the same reference numerals.

That is, compared to the apparatus shown in FIG. 4, the glow discharge decomposition device shown in FIG. 1 is formed so that the gas blowing direction of the gas blowout port 9a penetrated through the electrode plate 2 is not perpendicular to the substrate surface. When the gas blowing direction of all the gas blowing ports 9a is uniformly aligned and the gas exhaust means is formed at the bottom of the reaction vessel 1 as shown in FIG. The gas blown out heads downward while spirally rotating around the substrate 10, and a glow discharge is generated between the substrate 10 and the electrode plate 2 in this gas flow state.

According to the glow discharge decomposition device having the above configuration, the gas outlet 9
The gas blown out from a does not hit the substrate surface spot-wise, so that a uniform temperature is maintained over the entire substrate, and the gas is kept constant near the circumferential surface over the entire substrate surface. Because of the flow, the active species generated as a result of glow discharge decomposition are generally homogeneous and in an equal amount over the entire substrate surface, and as a result, a homogeneous a-5i film can be formed over the entire film surface.

Further, according to the present invention, when the gas is spirally rotated as described above, if the gas blowing direction of the gas blowing port 9a is set within the following range, electrons can be made more homogeneous over the film surface of the a-St film. It can be a photographic characteristic.

That is, according to experiments repeatedly conducted by the inventors, the third
As shown in the figure, the outer diameter of the substrate is 2r5, and the inner diameter of the electrode plate is 2r5.
rz, and the blowing direction of the gas outlet 9a is expressed as the deflection angle θ from the direction with respect to the central axis of the substrate, and if it is set in the range of θ≧5in-' (r+/rz), a-
The St film has even and uniform electrophotographic properties, and even if the film is repeatedly formed using the same glow discharge decomposition device, there will be no unevenness in quality between individual A-3I photosensitive drums, resulting in high quality and It was confirmed that an a-Si photoreceptor drum with a high conversion rate could be obtained. Note that the angle θ0 in the figure is sin ~
'(r=/rz).

〔Example〕

Next, examples of the present invention will be described.

(Example 1) In the glow discharge decomposition device shown in Fig. 1, r1=54
mm, r==100mm, electrode plate thickness 2.5n+
The angle (θ) is 45° to the glow discharge electrode plate set at m.
A gas outlet (hole diameter φ0.5 mm) with a deflection of 30
A plurality of pieces are penetrated in a grid pattern with a pitch of mm, and a-
St film forming gas was introduced from the gas introduction lower at a flow rate of 3000 secH, and the gas pressure inside the cylindrical electrode plate was set to 0.5T.
An a-Si photoreceptor drum was manufactured by setting the substrate temperature to 300° C., the high-frequency power for glow discharge to 250° C., and the frequency to 13.56 MHz. In this manufacturing example, θO is 33°.

When the a-3i photosensitive drum manufactured in this way was installed in a copying machine and subjected to corona discharge at 5.6 KV to form an image, no spot image defects such as white spots appeared on the copied image. It was confirmed that the density reproducibility was excellent over the entire screen.

In addition, we fabricated 10 A-3T photosensitive drums under the same manufacturing conditions using the same glow discharge decomposition apparatus, and evaluated the images in the same manner as above. It was possible to obtain high quality images, with no differences between drums.

(Example 2) In this example, the gas blowing direction θ from the electrode plate in (Example 1) was set to 22°, and the other conditions were exactly the same as in (Example 1). As a result of image evaluation of the photoreceptor drum, it was found that no spot image defects such as white spots appeared in the copied image, excellent density reproducibility over the entire image, and a high quality image.

In addition, 10 a-Si photoreceptor drums were manufactured under the same manufacturing conditions using the same glow discharge decomposition apparatus, and the images were evaluated in the same manner as above. images were obtained, and no noticeable differences were observed, confirming that there were no practical problems.

(Example 3) In this example, in (Example 1), the a-St film forming gas was introduced from the gas introduction lower at a flow rate of 6000 secM, and the gas pressure inside the cylindrical electrode plate was set to 0.5 Torr.
Furthermore, the high frequency power for glow discharge was set to 500-, and the other conditions were exactly the same as in (Example 1), so that a-
When we manufactured a 5i photosensitive drum, we were able to increase the film formation rate by about twice.

An image evaluation of the a-3i photosensitive drum produced in this way revealed that no spot image defects such as white spots appeared in the copied image, excellent density reproducibility over the entire image, and high quality. Image obtained.

(Example 4) In this example, the gas blowing direction from the electrode plate is set perpendicular to the substrate surface (θ#O0) in (Example work), and other than that, the conditions are exactly the same as in (Example 1). As a result of image evaluation of the a-St photoreceptor drum produced in this way, spot-like image defects such as white spots appeared in the copied image.

(Example 5) In this example, the hole diameter of the gas outlet in (Example 1) is φ
As a result of image evaluation of the a-St photoreceptor drum manufactured under the same conditions as (Example 1), we found that there were no spot image defects such as white spots on the copied image. was not observed, and a high quality image was obtained in the same manner as in (Example 1).

(Example 6) In this example, the hole diameter of the gas outlet in (Example 1) is φ
1 mm, and the other conditions were exactly the same as in Example 1, and as a result of image evaluation of the a-3i photosensitive drum manufactured under these conditions, spot-like image defects such as white spots appeared in the copied image. A high quality image was obtained in the same way as in (Example 1).

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, according to the glow discharge decomposition apparatus of the present invention, the film-forming gas is spirally rotated around the substrate, which affects the thickness of the electrode plate and the pore diameter of the gas outlet formed therein. It is possible to form a homogeneous film without causing any damage, and as a result, uniform properties are obtained over the entire film and there is no variation in quality between individual film-formed products.

Furthermore, according to the glow discharge decomposition apparatus of the present invention, it is possible to increase the amount of gas blown out from the glow discharge electrode plate, so high-speed film formation is possible, thereby increasing production efficiency and reducing production costs. can.

It should be noted that the present invention is not limited to the above-mentioned embodiments, and any changes or improvements to the gas ejection means etc. may be made without departing from the gist of the present invention.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a schematic plan view of the glow discharge decomposition apparatus of the present invention, Figure 2 is an explanatory diagram showing the state of gas flow around the cylindrical substrate for film formation, and Figure 3 is a diagram showing the state of gas flow around the cylindrical substrate for film formation. An explanatory diagram showing the blowing direction of the film-forming gas, FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing the front of a conventional glow discharge decomposition device, and FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram showing the plane of the glow discharge decomposition device shown in FIG. 4. be. 1...Reaction vessel 2...Glow discharge electrode plate 3...Substrate support 7...Gas inlet 9...Gas outlet 10...Drum-shaped substrate patent applicant (663) Kyocera Corporation Company representative Anjo
Kinju

Claims (1)

[Claims] A cylindrical electrode plate is installed inside the reaction chamber into which the film-forming gas is introduced, and a cylindrical film-forming substrate is installed inside the electrode plate. In a glow discharge decomposition apparatus that decomposes a film-forming gas by glow discharge to form a film on a substrate, a gas ejection in which the film-forming gas is blown out in a direction non-perpendicular to the substrate surface. A glow discharge decomposition device characterized in that means is formed on the electrode plate, and the gas is decomposed by glow discharge while spirally rotating around the substrate during film formation.