A novel highly stable hydrogen terminated silicon coating was synthesized by microwave plasma reaction of mixture of silane, hydrogen, and helium wherein it is proposed that He+ served as a catalyst with atomic hydrogen to form highly stable silicon hydrides. In contrast, the replacement of helium (He+) with xenon (Xe+) yielded nothing extraordinary. Novel silicon hydride was identified by time of time-of-flight-secondary-ion-mass spectroscopy (ToF-SlMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The ToF-SIMS identified the coatings as hydride by a large SiH+ peak, extensive-length SinHm- fragments, and an increased Si2+ in the positive spectrum as well as a dominant H- in the negative spectrum. Since hydrogen is the only element with no primary element peaks, XPS identified the H content of the SiH coatings as comprising novel silicon hydrides due to new peaks at 11, 43, and 5 5 eV in the absence of corresponding peaks of any candidate element at higher binding energies. The silicon hydride surface was remarkably stable to air as shown by ToF-SIMS and XPS. The highly stable amorphous silicon hydride coating may advance the production of integrated circuits and microdevices by resisting the oxygen passivation of the surface and possibly altering the dielectric constant and band gap to increase device performance. The percentage hydride incorporation may be used to increase or tune the band gap and optical properties in photovoltaics and electronics devices. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.