Amorphous silicon film characterization

For these conditions, Armaou and Christofides [4] determine the thickness profile, in Fig. 10.4-3, for the amorphous silicon film after 60 s, when the average thickness reaches 500 A. When characterizing the non-uniformity of the film, the sharp increase in thickness calculated near the outer edge of the wafer is assumed to be due to the boundary conditions, which assume step changes to zero concentrations at the edge. Brass and Lee (2003) disregard the profile from r = 3.6 to 4 cm, and compute the non-uniformity as ... 

Suzuki, R., Kobayashi, Y., Mikado, T., Matsuda, A. et al. (1991) Characterization of hydrogenated amorphous silicon films by a pulsed positron beam , Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 30,2438. 

Fig. 15. Illustrations of modified HK adsorption models, (a) Geometric representation slit pore filled with adsorbate [110]. (b) Two-stage HK mesopore isotherm model [114] in which capillary condensation (1) to the filled state (2) is preceded by a wetting transition (3) from an empty state (4) to an intermediate condition characterized by film growth on the pore walls (5). (Reproduced with permission from S. Ramalingam, E. S. Aydil, and D. Maroudas. Molecular dynamics study of the interactions of small thermal and energetic silicon clusters with crystalline and amorphous silicon surfaces. Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B, 2000 19 634-644. Copyright 2001, AVS.)...

Amorphous silicon nitride films, which are resistant to water vapor, salts, and other chemicals and, therefore, are applied as a final encapsulating layer for ICs, are effectively produced using PECVD. A typical feed-gas mixture for PECVD is SiH4-NH3. The process is performed in plasma at pressures of 0.25-3 Torr conventional substrate temperatures are in the range 250-500°C. Deposition rates of silicon nitride films under such conditions are about 20-50 nm/min. The plasma deposited silicon nitride film can usually be characterized... 

To examine the effects that might be achieved in the ceramic by simply altering the viscosity of the IGF, a brick wall type model can be used to characterize the effective viscosity of the silicon nitride ceramic composed of rigid, non-deforming grains surrounded by a viscous media. For the simple case of an array of cubic rigid grains with a size of G with an amorphous film of a thickness (t) and a viscosity (t o), the effective viscosity (rjeff) of the silicon nitride ceramic is ... 

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