Z.S. Houweling

Reaction Mechanism for Deposition of Silicon Nitride by Hot-Wire CVD with Ultra High Deposition Rate(>7 nm/s)

The deposition process of silicon nitride (SiN x ) by hot-wire chemical vapor deposition (HW CVD) is investigated by exploring the effects of process pressure and gas-flow ratio on the composition of the deposited SiNx films. Furthermore, experiments with D 2 and deuterated silane were performed to gain further insight in the deposition reactions taking place. It appeared that the N/Si ratio in the layers determines the structural properties of the deposited films and since the volume concentration of Si-atoms in the deposited films is constant with N/Si ratio, the structure of the films are largely determined by the quantity of incorporated nitrogen. Because the decomposition rate of the ammonia source gas is much smaller than that of silane, the properties of the SiN x layers are largely determined by the ability to decompose the ammonia and to incorporate nitrogen into the growing material. It appeared that the process pressure greatly enhances the efficiency of the ammonia decomposition, presumably caused by the higher partial pressure of atomic hydrogen. With this knowledge we increased the deposition rate to a very high value of 7 nm/s for dense transparent SiN x films, much faster than conventional deposition techniques for SiN x can offer. Despite this high deposition rate good control over the composition is achieved by varying the flow ratio of the source gasses. Depositions performed with deuterated silane as a source gas reveal that almost all hydrogen in N-rich films originates from ammonia, probably caused by SiN x matrix formation by cross linking reactions