Reactivity of organosilicon precursors in remote hydrogen microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition of silicon carbide and silicon carbonitride thin‐film coatings

Abstract

A number of organosilicon precursors for silicon carbide and silicon carbonitride thin-film coatings, such as silanes, carbosilanes, aminosilanes, and disilazane, respectively, were characterized in terms of their reactivity in a remote microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition process, which was induced using hydrogen as plasma generating gas. The process displayed high selectivity with respect to the activating species and the chemical bonds in the molecular structure of the precursors. In view of very short life times of excited hydrogen plasma species the activation step takes place with an exclusive contribution of ground-state hydrogen atoms. The C-H, C-C, Si-C, Si-N, C-N and N-H bonds present in the molecules of the precursors are non-reactive and only the Si-H or Si-Si bonds play a key role in the activation step. The reactivity of the precursors was characterized in a quantitative way by the yield of the film growth parameter. The yield parameter expressing the mass of film per unit mass of the precursor fed to the reactor was calculated from the slopes of linear plots of time dependencies of film mass and precursor mass, which were determined for each investigated precursor. The reactivity of the precursors was found to be strongly dependent on the number of the Si-H units present in their molecules and those containing two Si-H units appeared to be most reactive.

Low Temperature Hetero‐Epitaxial Growth of 3C‐SiC Films on Si Utilizing Microwave Plasma CVD

“…As a result, if the MWCVD process can be applied for the epitaxial growth of 3C‐SiC on Si, the large‐scale fabrication of high‐quality, single‐crystalline, 3C‐SiC film might become a reality, however, even though MWCVD‐based techniques (i.e. electron‐cyclotron‐resonance MWCVD, remote plasma MWCVD) have previously been applied to deposit 3C‐SiC films, only polycrystalline and amorphous SiC films have been obtained, and no epitaxial growth has been achieved 29–33. Therefore, in the present study, we address, for the first time, the possibility of utilizing MWCVD to achieve the low‐temperature, epitaxial growth of 3C‐SiC films on Si wafers.…”

Atmospheric Pressure Plasma CVD of Amorphous Hydrogenated Silicon Carbonitride (a‐SiCN:H) Films Using Triethylsilane and Nitrogen

“…This residual stress can be minimized by using a remote PECVD (R‐PECVD) process, where the precursor reacts with the reactive radicals in the region that is isolated from the energetic ions and electrons. Wrobel and coworkers6–10 used a R‐PECVD process with various metal‐organic precursor sources with different gas compositions to form the afore‐mentioned Si based thin films at low‐pressures.…”

Amorphous Hydrogenated Silicon Carbide (a‐SiC:H) Coatings Produced by Remote Hydrogen Microwave Plasma CVD from Bis(dimethylsilyl)ethane ‐ a Novel Single‐Source Precursor

“…[10] In this report we investigate the effect of substrate (or deposition) temperature on the kinetics of RP-CVD, chemical structure, surface morphology, as well as physical (density) and optical (refractive index, photoluminescence) properties of a-SiC:H films. The relationships between some properties of the films and their structural parameters related to the content of the SiÀC bonds were determined.…”

“…In view of our recent study [10] on the reactivity of a number of commercially available alkylsilane, alkyldisilane, and alkylcarbosilane compounds in RP-CVD, based on determining film deposition yield (expressing the mass of formed film per unit mass of the precursor fed to the CVD reactor), BDMSE displayed the strongest reactivity of the investigated compounds. This is ascribed to easy decomposition of carbosilane, SiÀCH 2 ÀCH 2 ÀSi, unit present in the precursor molecule, as illustrated by the reactions which take place in the activation steps of RP-CVD.…”

“…This is ascribed to easy decomposition of carbosilane, SiÀCH 2 ÀCH 2 ÀSi, unit present in the precursor molecule, as illustrated by the reactions which take place in the activation steps of RP-CVD. [10] The activation of a BDMSE precursor via the reaction with atomic hydrogen results in the formation of a biradical structure, as shown in Equation 1. …”