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

Paper TF-TuM6
Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition of SiO@sub x@N@sub y@ for Large Area Applications in a Matrix Distributed Electron Cyclotron Resonance Reactor

Tuesday, October 30, 2001, 10:00 am, Room 123

Session: Optical Thin Films
Presenter: A. Hofrichter, Ecole Polytechnique CNRS, France
Authors: A. Hofrichter, Ecole Polytechnique CNRS, France
A. Charaya, Ecole Polytechnique CNRS, France
B. Drevillon, Ecole Polytechnique CNRS, France
Correspondent: Click to Email
There is a considerable interest to use high-density plasma sources for plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition of thin films on large areas. Major issues in this field are deposition uniformity and whether the use of radiofrequency bias is needed to obtain high quality materials. In this work we use the recently developed matrix distributed electron cyclotron resonance concept for the deposition of silicon oxynitride thin films. By using an array of individually tunable ECR plasma sources (5x5 in our case), this concept is easily scaleable by increasing the number of the sources while maintaining the necessary plasma homogeneity. Films were deposited onto glass, crystalline silicon and polycarbonate substrates with a typical uniformity of 1,5 % on 200x200 mm, and 4% on 350x350 mm. The properties of the materials are analyzed with in situ UV-Visible spectroscopic phase-modulated ellipsometry (PME), ex-situ transmission, Infra-Red ellipsometry, RBS and ERDA measurements. Without substrate heating and radiofrequency bias dense, non-absorbing, low hydrogen content stoichiometric films of SiO@sub 2@ and Si @sub 3@N@sub 4@ are grown from the mixture of SiH@sub 4@, O@sub 2@ and N@sub 2@. By changing the nitrogen to oxygen gas flow ratio the refractive index (measured at 632.8 nm) can be smoothly and reproducibly tuned from 1.46 to 1.95. Deposition rates are between 13.0 and 0.5 nm/s for SiO@sub 2@ and Si@sub 3@ N@sub 4@ respectively. The influence of process parameters, such as deposition pressure, microwave power, gas flows and flow ratios are studied and correlated with Langmuir probe measurements and optical emission spectroscopy to obtain better insight into the plasma properties and the mechanisms of the growth.