Material property differences are observed in hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (mu c-Si:H) thin films deposited under the same nominal conditions in a single-chamber plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition system but at different stages of chamber history during prolonged usage. This phenomenon is called system shift, which results from the increase of powder coverage on the surface of the cathode and the coatings on other areas in the chamber. We propose a pre-hydrogen glow method to suppress the system shifting. Experimental results show that this method is very effective to reduce the non-reproducibility in mu c-Si:H depositions for prolonged usage of the deposition system. In addition, the mu c-Si:H films deposited with the pre-hydrogen glow have an improved structural homogeneity along the film thickness. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.