Plasma‐Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposited Silicon Oxynitride Films for Optical Waveguide Bridges for Use in Mechanical Sensors

Abstract

In this paper the influence of RF power, ammonia flow, annealing temperature, and annealing time on the optical and mechanical properties of plasma-enhanced chemically vapor deposited silicon oxynitride films, is presented. A low refractive index (1.47 to 1.48) film having tensile stress has been developed as cladding material for optical waveguides. By combining this waveguide material with a special type of UV photosensitive glass, a low tensile stress strip-loaded waveguide structure. based on a three-laver sandwich structure, has been designed and the stress distribution through the srructure investigated.

“Growth and Characterization of SiO2 Films for the Fabrication of Optical Waveguides”

“…It is seen that the R.1. It is essential that the stress of the deposited Si0 2 film should be as low as possible when used in the formation of optical waveguide (5). The results of our PECVD system fulfil the expectation of the deposited film in the formation of waveguide as far as the role of stress is concerned.…”

“…The waveguides are used for various functions including optical interconnects and the medium for the propagation in Optoelectronics Integrated Circuits (OICs), in addition to the several other applications in Optoelectronics devices (4,5). The Si0 2 films grown by conventional thermal CVD are not reliable due to the very long time and high thermal stress that the material have to withstand during device fabrication (6,7), Hence, it is very important to deposit the Si0 2 films at low temperatures as these films are preferably used for aforementioned purposes.…”

Structure-Property Relationships of Amorphous Hydrogenated Silicon-Carbon Films Produced by Atomic Hydrogen-Induced CVD from a Single-Source Precursor

“…This stronger effect noted for annealing may be attributed to thermal rearrangement of the Si±C network associated with the evolution of hydrogen and/or hydrogen-containing groups, and the resulting formation of irregular bonds in the network, causing defects in the film structure and generating tensile stress. It is worth mentioning that annealing of the a-Si:H [32,33] and a-Si:N:O:H [34] films, produced by DP-CVD [32,34] and thermal CVD, [33] transformed a compressive stress (generated during film growth) into a tensile stress.…”

Fabrication of planar SiON optical waveguide and its characterization

“…Nowadays, the deposition of the core layer is of great interest for many applications in integrated optics because the planar waveguide devices are based on doped silica (SiO 2 ) thick layers [5][6][7]. The deposition of the silicon oxynitride (SiON) thick layer using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) has several advantages, such as low deposition temperature and high deposition rate [10]. CVD processes, such as low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) and atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (APCVD), have disadvantages of a high deposition temperature and a very low growth rate [8,9].…”