IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Thin Films Friday Sessions
       Session TF-FrM

Paper TF-FrM9
On the Preparation of Silicon Carbonitride Compounds

Friday, November 2, 2001, 11:00 am, Room 123

Session: Diamond and Related Materials
Presenter: H. Lutz, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany
Authors: H. Lutz, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany
M. Bruns, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany
E. Theodossiu, Universitaet Frankfurt/Main, Germany
H. Baumann, Universitaet Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Correspondent: Click to Email
Carbonitride as well as Silicon Carbonitride thin films have been the subject of great interest in recent years due to the expected improvement of surface properties for a lot of applications. Various precursor based techniques have been employed to synthezise the pure materials. However, most of these efforts result in amorphous films or tiny crystals embedded in amorphous matrices of deficient nitrogen content and considerable hydrogen and oxygen content, respectively. Very promising approaches to Si-C-N synthesis are R.F. magnetron sputtering and ion implantation providing tailored stoichiometries at high purity. Silicon carbonitrides were reactively sputtered using @super 15@N enriched N@sub 2@/Ar sputter gas and co-sputter targets with different Si/C areas resulting in defined and reproducible Si/C ratios at constant nitrogen concentrations. Alternatively, surface modification by sequential high fluence implantation of C and N ions into silicon allows for tuning the atomic fraction of all elements over a wide range. Both techniques enable us to synthezise ternary systems of more than 52 at.% nitrogen content, which are stable up to 1000°C. @paragraph@ The chemical composition of the Si-C-N films was characterized by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. In case of the buried implanted layers chemical binding states were attainable after sputter etching using 300 eV Ar ions of a projected range minimized to a negligible part of the XPS information depth. In addition, Auger electron spectroscopy, FTIR spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy were used to achieve a comprehensive characterization. For quantification XPS and AES data were calibrated with absolute concentration values from non-Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. Furthermore, both preparation techniques have the advantage that @super 15@N and @super 13@C isotopes can be introduced into the layers enabling non-destructive nuclear reaction analysis for depth profiling.