PECVD formation of ultrathin silicon nitride layers for CMOS technology

Raman and FTIR Studies on PECVD Grown Ammonia-Free Amorphous Silicon Nitride Thin Films for Solar Cell Applications

“…Amorphous silicon nitride (a-SiN x ) thin films deposited by PECVD are considered to be one of the most promising materials in semiconductor industry as gate dielectrics, isolation materials, diffusion barriers, and acoustic wave devices on semiconductor substrates [1,2]. Also a-SiN x layers are widely used as antireflection coatings, bulk, and surface passivation layers in solar cells applications [3,4].…”

Influence of substrate temperature on the properties of fluorinated silicon-nitride thin films deposited by IC-RPECVD

“…7,8 In several of these applications, keeping the deposition temperature of these films in a low range (,400°C) constitutes a mandatory restriction. For example, the fabrication of a-Si:H TFTs on flexible plastic substrates for large-area imagers and displays requires preparation of silicon-nitride gate dielectrics at temperatures low enough to avoid thermal deformation and/or melting of the substrates.…”

Low temperature–low hydrogen content silicon nitrides thin films deposited by PECVD using dichlorosilane and ammonia mixtures

“…This dielectric material combines optical, electrical, mechanical and chemical properties that make it ideal for fabricating a number of semiconductor devices [1,2]. Due to its electronic properties such as relatively wide band gap (4.0-5.0 eV), high dielectric breakdown field (10 6 -10 7 V/ cm), dielectric constant (4.0-7.5), along with its high density (up to 3.1 g/cm 3 ), mechanical strength, and hardness, and exceptional thermal and chemical stability, thin films of this material are ideal for applications such as electrical insulation in integrated circuits [3], gate dielectric layers in thin film transistors (TFTs) [4,5] and CMOS devices [6], barriers against ions (sodium) and water diffusion, and masks for selective oxidation of silicon [2], selective doping and KOH etching [7]. Additionally, since silicon nitride films present very low absorption losses in the visible and infrared regions, and its index of refraction can be varied continuously over a wide range (1.7-3.0) by changing its composition, they are also very attractive for applications in thin film waveguides with desired characteristics of fiber match and compactness, and other integrated optical devices 0022 [8,9], and anti-reflecting and passivating coatings in silicon solar cells [10].…”

“…This requirement has widespread the use of diverse plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) processes for depositing at low temperatures high quality silicon nitride films, such as electron cyclotron resonance [17,18], remote-PECVD [5,14,19], inductively coupled (IC) PECVD [16,20], and the conventional parallel plate-capacitive coupled PECVD [6,10,12,[21][22][23][24]. It should be mentioned that the latter PECVD version has continuously been of great interest because it has been largely studied and scaled-up to mass production dimensions in the production lines [21,25].…”