A slot antenna (µ-SLAN) microwave surface wave plasma source was developed for SiN
x
thin film
preparation. A µ-SLAN-produced argon plasma density up to 1011 cm-3 has been achieved at an axial
position of about 43 cm from the ring cavity at a microwave power of 500 W and a chamber pressure of
0.5 Torr. High-speed deposition of SiN
x
thin film was performed using the µ-SLAN-assisted remote
plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition method incorporating tris(dimethylamino)silane
(TDMAS) as a monomer source. The film deposition rate increased rapidly up to 270 nm/min when
some hydrogen was mixed in the nitrogen gas and increased from 0 to 1%. A further increase of
hydrogen content, however, only slightly increased the film deposition rate. A high deposition rate of
280 nm/min was obtained when 15% hydrogen was mixed in the nitrogen gas, with the chamber
pressure and microwave power at 1.5 Torr and 500 W, respectively.
An organosilicon compound, hexamethyldisilane (HMDS) was incorporated for SiC thin film preparation by remote plasma enhanced CVD method. We investigated how plasma excited radicals react with source monomers using two kinds of gas mixtures. It was found that film component and formation mechanism depends on stronger on plasma gases. Using a mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen gases as plasma gas source, deposited films contained large amounts of nitrogen. When uing an argon and hydrogen mixture, deposited film was a SiC with large hydrogen contents. In this research, we found that hydrogen radicals are very active for decomposition of monomer source gas and this can be related to precursors for film deposition. When using a mixture of argon and hydrogen as plasma gas, the film deposition speed was influenced by substrate temperature. The estimated activation energy was larger than the case of using nitrogen and hydrogen gases. Different reaction mechanisms were observed for different plasma gas source
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