ORIGINAL PAPER Inﬂuence of Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Parameters on Characteristics of As–Te Chalcogenide Films Leonid Mochalov 1,3 • Aleksey Nezhdanov 1 • Mikhail Kudryashov 1 • Alexandr Logunov 1 • Askold Strikovskiy 2 • Mikhail Gushchin 2 • Giuseppe Chidichimo 4 • Giovanni De Filpo 4 • Aleksandr Mashin 1 Received: 30 March 2017 / Accepted: 29 June 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract First time the method of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition was used for preparation of As–Te chalcogenide ﬁlms of different chemical and phase composition. The samples were synthesized via direct interaction of arsenic and tellurium vapors into low-temperature non-equilibrium RF (40 MHz) plasma discharge at reduced pressure (0.1 Torr). The plasma parameters such as temperature and concentration of electrons were measured by moving double probe diagnostic system. The dependence of solid phase radial distribution on plasma characteristics was established. Besides, the phase and structural evolution of As–Te ﬁlms based on equilibrium coexistence of two phases (AsTe and As 2 Te 3 ) and implemented by changing of the ratio of the initial substances in gas phase has been studied and discussed. Keywords As–Te system  Chalcogenide ﬁlms  PECVD Introduction Properties of chalcogenide materials are mainly depend on the concrete method of their preparation, because the synthesis conditions directly determine their structure. This statement is especially apparent when we are talking about chalcogenide thin ﬁlms pre- pared by different deposition techniques. & Leonid Mochalov mochalovleo@gmail.com 1 Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, Nizhny Novgorod 603950, Russia 2 Institute for Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia 3 Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University n.a. R.E. Alekseev, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia 4 Department of Chemistry, University of Calabria, P. Bucci-15c, Rende (CS), Italy 123 Plasma Chem Plasma Process DOI 10.1007/s11090-017-9830-x