Interface studies of silicon nitride dielectric layers

Silicon nitride is currently used as the dielectric in dynamic random acces s memory storage capacitors. The needs in terms of lifetime result in growi ng nitride that has a minimum leakage current while having the maximum elec trical strength such as electrical field to breakdown or injected charge to breakdown. In this paper, we studied silicon nitrides grown by low pressur e chemical vapor deposition and the influence of process conditions such as total pressure or gas ratio over electrical reliability of these dielectri cs. We show that the process condition leading to the smallest nucleation t ime have the smoother layers as well as the most reliable dielectric. (C) 2 001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.