Structural and mechanical properties of amorphous silicon carbonitride films prepared by vapor-transport chemical vapor deposition

Surface roughness, mechanical properties and bonding structure of silicon carbon nitride films grown by dual ion beam sputtering

“…With rising argon concentration in the gas mixture, the Si content in the SiCN films increased while the C content decreased, which led to higher hardness of the SiCN films [20]. Awad et al [17] reported that the increase incorporation of N in the a-SiCN:H films resulted in an increase of the average surface roughness from 4 to 12 nm, and both H and E of the a-SiCN:H films decrease from ∼17 and 160 GPa to ∼13 and 136 GPa, respectively when the N content is increased from 0% to 27 at.%. It was concluded that the assisting ion beam concentration was the major factor.…”

“…So far, the silicon carbon nitride (SiCN) films have been synthesized by using different chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods, such as microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MW-CVD) [11,12], electron cyclotron resonance plasma chemical vapor deposition (ECR-CVD) [1,10], hot wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) [13,14], plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) [8,15,16], vapor-transport chemical vapor deposition (VT-CVD) [17]. Besides the above various CVD methods, the SiCN films also have been deposited by ion implantation [5,6] and various physical vapor deposition (PVD) methods, such as ion beam sputtering [1,11,18] and magnetron sputtering [2][3][4]9,[19][20][21][22].…”

“…If the SiCN films were deposited by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) with the reactant gas of SiH 4 -CH 4 -NH 3 -H 2 mixture, hydrogen was inevitably introduced into film. For the SiCN:H films, Jedrzejowski et al [15] reported the hardness values of the SiCN:H films higher than 27 GPa, while Awad et al [17] reported that the hardness of the a-SiCN:H film varied in the range of 13-17 GPa and decreased with the increase of the N content. In comparison to the abovementioned CVD methods, the SiCN films grown by PVD and ion implantation could avoid the poisonous gases such as SiH 4 , NH 3 and CH 4 .…”

Microwave Plasma Process for SiCN:H Thin Films Synthesis with Composition Varying from SiC:H to SiN:H in H2/N2/Ar/Hexamethyldisilazane Gas Mixture

“…Similar results were reported elsewhere. [29,30] In Figure 2, we have plotted the variation of relative bonding density of Si-C (BE ¼ 100.5 eV), [11,[29][30][31] Si-N (BE ¼ 101.5 eV) [29][30][31] and N-C (BE ¼ 395.7 eV) [32] as a function of r(N 2 ). Si-C bonding density strongly decreases whereas Si-N strongly increases with increasing r(N 2 ).…”

Compilation on Synthesis, Characterization and Properties of Silicon and Boron Carbonitride Films

“…The Si 1-x-y C x N y films grown with C 3 H 8 gas possesses the most desirable characteristics for electronic devices and other applications. a-SiCN:H films were successfully obtained through an in-house developed vapor-transport CVD technique in a N 2 atmosphere (Awad et al, 2009). Polydimethylsilane (PDMS) was used as a precursor for both silicon and carbon, while NH 3 was mixed with argon to ensure the in-situ nitrogenation of the films.…”