IR studies of reactive DC magnetron sputtered SiC films on silicon using effective medium theory

Silicon carbide films were reactively DC sputtered on Si(111) substrates us ing a silicon target in a mixed CH4/Ar atmosphere. Auger electron spectrosc opy (AES) and non-Rutherford backscattering in which an incident He+ beam w ith high energy (4.3 MeV for carbon analysis) was employed to analyze the c omposition of the films. The dependence of the optical behavior of the SiC films on their compositions were studied by IR reflectance in the range of 400 to 4000 cm(-1) The experimental IR reflectance in this range was fitted by calculating the complex dielectric function of the films based on effec tive medium theory (EMT), in which the SiC films were consisted of homogene ously distributed SiC (amorphous and crystalline). The fitting of the exper imental data using our model is quite satisfactory, which means the model i n our simulation is reliable in explaining the IR optical properties of DC sputtered SiC films. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.