AVS 46th International Symposium
    Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session NS-WeM

Paper NS-WeM3
Scanning Probe Lithography of Silicon Nitride Thin Films

Wednesday, October 27, 1999, 9:00 am, Room 612

Session: Nanopatterning
Presenter: F.S.-S. Chien, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Authors: F.S.-S. Chien, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
S.W. Lin, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
W.-F. Hsieh, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Y.-C. Chou, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
T.-T. Chen, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
T.S. Chao, National Nano Device Laboratory, Taiwan
S. Gwo, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
Correspondent: Click to Email
Silicon nitride has been extensively used as etch stops, diffusion barriers, oxidation masks, and gate dielectric layers in integrated circuit processing. A new method is proposed here to perform local oxidation and negative pattern transfer on silicon nitride thin films. A LPCVD silicon nitride film of 25 Å thickness grown on a p-type silicon wafer is locally oxidized by the probe of an atomic force microscope under positive biases of 5 V to 10 V. In this approach, nanometer-size oxidation patterns can be made on the silicon nitride film. By using the selective HF etching, the oxidized regions on the silicon nitride film can be removed. In a second step, the orientation dependent KOH etching, which has an extremely large selectivity between silicon and silicon nitride, can produce high-aspect-ratio trenched structures (pattern transfer of the original oxide mask) on the (110)-oriented silicon wafer. Such a new method of producing negative-resist pattern tranfer can greatly enhance the capabilities of scanning probe lithography for the future microelecronics and optoelectronics applications on the nanometer scale. @FootnoteText@ F. S.-S. Chien is also with Center for Measurement Standards, Hsinchu, Taiwan.