Se. Alexandrov et al., BONDED HYDROGEN IN SILICON-NITRIDE FILMS DEPOSITED BY REMOTE PLASMA-ENHANCED CHEMICAL-VAPOR-DEPOSITION, Journal of materials chemistry, 4(12), 1994, pp. 1843-1847
Using FTIR the hydrogen content of silicon nitride films grown by remo
te plasma-enhanced CVD (RPECVD) has been quantitatively examined, The
influences of process parameters on the concentration of bonded hydrog
en and on its nature are discussed. It is suggested that the incorpora
tion of Si-H bonds is largely determined by gas-phase processes while
that of N-H bonds arises from surface interactions. The preferential t
ype of hydrogen bonding to silicon is found to occur as Si-H-2 whereas
for nitrogen N-H appears to be the most likely form of bonding. The t
otal hydrogen content of capacitively coupled RPECVD films is found to
be only ca. 9 x 10(21) cm(-3) at a growth rate ca. 20 times that obta
inable by inductively coupled RPCEVD. Therefore there is considerable
potential for depositing films with very low total hydrogen content by
capacitively coupled RPECVD.