Blistering mechanisms of atomic-layer-deposited AlN and Al2O3 films

Broas, Mikael; Jiang, Hua; Graff, Andreas; Sajavaara, Timo; Vuorinen, Vesa; Paulasto‐Kröckel, Mervi

doi:10.1063/1.4994974

Cited by 19 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…By comparing these results, it is observed that the Al 2 O 3 film shows increased negative fixed charge after the heat treatment. Similar results were reported in many papers [19][20][21][22][23]. According to these, the negative fixed charge of Al 2 O 3 results from its structural change.…”

Section: Analysis Of Al 2 O 3 Structuresupporting

confidence: 90%

“…According to these, the negative fixed charge of Al 2 O 3 results from its structural change. This can be confirmed by the bonding change of Al-O, Al-O-H and Si-O with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis, as well as an analysis of the TEM images [2,4,19,20,24]. We confirmed the structural change of Al 2 O 3 through EELS, showing it has both octahedral and tetrahedral structures.…”

Section: Analysis Of Al 2 O 3 Structuresupporting

confidence: 64%

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Surface Passivation of Boron Emitters on n-Type Silicon Solar Cells

et al. 2019

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Al2O3/SiNx stack passivation layers are among the most popular layers used for commercial silicon solar cells. In particular, aluminum oxide has a high negative charge, while the SiNx film is known to supply hydrogen as well as impart antireflective properties. Although there are many experimental results that show that the passivation characteristics are lowered by using the stack passivation layer, the cause of the passivation is not yet understood. In this study, we investigated the passivation characteristics of Al2O3/SiNx stack layers. To identify the hydrogenation effect, we analyzed the hydrogen migration with atom probe tomography by comparing the pre-annealing and post-annealing treatments. For chemical passivation, capacitance-voltage measurements were used to confirm the negative fixed charge density due to heat treatment. Moreover, the field-effect passivation was understood by confirming changes in the Al2O3 structure using electron energy-loss spectroscopy.

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Section: Analysis Of Al 2 O 3 Structuresupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Analysis Of Al 2 O 3 Structuresupporting

confidence: 64%

Surface Passivation of Boron Emitters on n-Type Silicon Solar Cells

et al. 2019

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“…A small tensile stress can be advantageous for membrane applications to keep the membrane flat. A high compressive stress might impose problems such as blistering, 23 which was observed for some samples with longer plasma times.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The increasing H concentration decreases the film density and refractive index 11 and may cause blistering during annealing as has been observed in the case of Al 2 O 3 . 23 Only a few publications exist on the deposition of AlN from AlCl 3 . The thermal deposition of AlN from NH 3 was investigated by Elers et al 24 and Jokinen et al 25 two decades ago and more recently by Lee et al 26,27 using Ar/H 2 / NH 3 plasma.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atomic layer deposition of AlN from AlCl3 using NH3 and Ar/NH3 plasma

Rontu

Sippola

Broas

et al. 2018

Journal of Vacuum Science &Amp; Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films

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The atomic layer deposition (ALD) of AlN from AlCl 3 was investigated using a thermal process with NH 3 and a plasma-enhanced (PE)ALD process with Ar/NH 3 plasma. The growth was limited in the thermal process by the low reactivity of NH 3 , and impractically long pulses were required to reach saturation. Despite the plasma activation, the growth per cycle in the PEALD process was lower than that in the thermal process (0.4 Å vs 0.7 Å). However, the plasma process resulted in a lower concentration of impurities in the films compared to the thermal process. Both the thermal and plasma processes yielded crystalline films; however, the degree of crystallinity was higher in the plasma process. The films had a preferential orientation of the hexagonal AlN [002] direction normal to the silicon (100) wafer surface. With the plasma process, film stress control was possible and tensile, compressive, or zero stress films were obtained by simply adjusting the plasma time.

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“…The degradation of the surface quality of several types of material is often due to the formation of blisters [1][2][3][4][5][6]. Blistering is caused by voids inside the material which have reached a sufficient size to touch and deform the surface because of the increased pressure of some gas inside the voids [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. In the worst cases blisters burst leaving craters [1,6,[8][9][10][11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vegard's-law-like dependence of the activation energy of blistering on the x composition in hydrogenated a-SixGe1-x

Serényi

Frigeri²,

Schiller

2018

Journal of Alloys and Compounds

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Surface quality is a key issue in semiconductor structures for device applications. Typical surface defects are blisters. Here we investigate on the relationship between the activation energy of blistering and the composition x in hydrogenated amorphous a-Si x Ge 1-x by employing layers deposited by Radio Frequency sputtering. To this aim the blistering activation energy was determined by means of Arrhenius plots in several samples with different compositions, including x=0 and x=1. Each sample was submitted to heat treatment up to the temperature where the onset of blistering was observed by change of the surface reflectivity. It is found that a linear dependence of the activation energy on x similar to the Vegard's law holds. The experimental result is supported by reaction kinetics modeling. It is suggested that the key step for the formation of blisters is the scission of the SiH and GeH bonds. The related energetic reaction leading to the formation of H 2 molecules in a-Si x Ge 1-x follows a linear law as a function of the x composition similarly to the activation energy.

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Blistering mechanisms of atomic-layer-deposited AlN and Al2O3 films

Cited by 19 publications

References 28 publications

Surface Passivation of Boron Emitters on n-Type Silicon Solar Cells

Surface Passivation of Boron Emitters on n-Type Silicon Solar Cells

Atomic layer deposition of AlN from AlCl3 using NH3 and Ar/NH3 plasma

Vegard's-law-like dependence of the activation energy of blistering on the x composition in hydrogenated a-SixGe1-x

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