AVS 45th International Symposium
    Selected Energy Epitaxy Topical Conference Wednesday Sessions
       Session SE-WeA

Paper SE-WeA8
Development of Atomic Nitrogen Sources and Atomic Nitridation Processes

Wednesday, November 4, 1998, 4:20 pm, Room 327

Session: Novel Sources for Selected Energy Growth
Presenter: O. Gluschenkov, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Authors: O. Gluschenkov, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
K. Kim, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Correspondent: Click to Email
With the goal of developing an efficient source of atomic nitrogen suitable for electronic materials processing, we have fabricated novel atomic nitrogen sources and with them conducted an investigation of nitrogen dissociation in a low-pressure nitrogen plasma. Plasma electric field, electron density, and vibrational temperature of nitrogen molecules have been estimated from experimental data obtained with the prototype sources. A simple model has been developed to predict the efficiency of atomic nitrogen production as a function of the source parameters: pressure, geometry, deposited power, and nitrogen throughput. An atomic nitrogen source with 60% of nitrogen atoms at the output has been constructed to study the atomic nitridation processes, the processes where nitridation is effected by atomic nitrogen only. The extremely high chemical potential of atomic nitrogen, small size of nitrogen atoms, and absence of other energetic particles and chemical contaminants lead to a dramatically different chemical kinetics and allow for high-rate, low-temperature, low-pressure, and low-damage processing. The processes investigated include the nitridation of thin SiO@sub 2@ gate dielectric and the growth of Group-III-Nitride crystals.