Plasma-enhanced chemical PECVD

PECVD. See Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. 

Dielectric Deposition Systems. The most common techniques used for dielectric deposition include chemical vapor deposition (CVD), sputtering, and spin-on films. In a CVD system thermal or plasma energy is used to decompose source molecules on the semiconductor surface (189). In plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD), typical source gases include silane, SiH, and nitrous oxide, N2O, for deposition of siUcon nitride. The most common CVD films used are siUcon dioxide, siUcon nitride, and siUcon oxynitrides. 

Plasmas can be used in CVD reactors to activate and partially decompose the precursor species and perhaps form new chemical species. This allows deposition at a temperature lower than thermal CVD. The process is called plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD) (12). The plasmas are generated by direct-current, radio-frequency (r-f), or electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) techniques. Eigure 15 shows a parallel-plate CVD reactor that uses r-f power to generate the plasma. This type of PECVD reactor is in common use in the semiconductor industry to deposit siUcon nitride, Si N and glass (PSG) encapsulating layers a few micrometers-thick at deposition rates of 5—100 nm /min. 

At the end of last century, a near frictionless carbon (NFC) coating was reported, which is practically hydrogen contained DLC film grown on steel and sapphire substrates using a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system [50]. By using a ball on a disk tribo-meter, a super low friction coefficient of 0.001-0.003 between the films coated on both the ball and the disk was achieved [50]. A mechanistic model was proposed that carbon atoms on the surface are partially di-hydrogenated, resulting in the chemical inertness of the surface. Consequently, adhesive interaction becomes weak and super low friction is achieved [22],... 

Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD) Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) reactions commonly occur at high temperatures (Table II). The use of a plasma to generate chemically reactive species in conjunction with CVD overcomes one of the most common... 

The amorphous silicon tandem solar cells consisted of three n-i-p a-Si H cells grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) [126]. The a-Si H cell area was 0.5 cm2. 

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process, 5 803-813,13 386 16 173, 531 17 209 22 129 23 7, 59 24 743-744 25 373. See also CVD entries Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) Vapor deposition catalyzed, 26 806 ceramics and, 5 663 common precursors and corresponding thin films grown, 5 805t in compound semiconductor processing, 22 188, 189... 

In the Development stage, detailed product design is carried out. This is the key step for the chemical vapor deposition of thin silicon films. As described in the next section, to obtain uniform thin films rapidly, it is desirable to optimize the design of the plasma-enhanced, chemical-vapor-deposition (PECVD) reactor. 

For epitaxial silicon wafers, product design focuses on optimizing the geometry of the plasma-enhanced, chemical-vapor-deposition (PECVD) reactor. To increase productivity, and maintain acceptable thickness uniformity, on the order of 5%, a simple optimization strategy locates a design that completes the deposition in 62 s. Then, for a standard manufacturing process, the economics are driven by the wafer costs, which are provided by a vendor at 206/wafer. At a sales price of 260/epitaxial wafer, the investor s rate of return is 18.3% and the return on investment is 25.3%. 

The steam reformer is a serpentine channel with a channel width of 1000 fim and depth of 230 fim (Figure 15). Four reformers were fabricated per single 100 mm silicon wafer polished on both sides. In the procedure employed to fabricate the reactors, plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) was used to deposit silicon nitride, an etch stop for a silicon wet etch later in the process, on both sides of the wafer. Next, the desired pattern was transferred to the back of the wafer using photolithography, and the silicon nitride was plasma etched. Potassium hydroxide was then used to etch the exposed silicon to the desired depth. Copper, approximately 33 nm thick, which was used as the reforming catalyst, was then deposited by sputter deposition. The reactor inlet was made by etching a 1 mm hole into the end... 

Figure 15 records an example of this relationship between incoming thickness variation and post-CMP thickness variation. The incoming thickness variation is due to the fact that the TEOS film was deposited in two different plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) chambers, which are not calibrated identically [13]. As can be seen in Fig. 15, the pre-CMP wafer-to-wafer thickness variation pattern has been perfectly preserved after CMP. 

There are numerous materials, both metallic and ceramic, that are produced via CVD processes, including some exciting new applications such as CVD diamond, but they all involve deposition on some substrate, making them fundamentally composite materials. There are equally numerous modifications to the basic CVD processes, leading to such exotic-sounding processes as vapor-phase epitaxy (VPE), atomic-layer epitaxy (ALE), chemical-beam epitaxy (CBE), plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD), laser-assisted CVD (LACVD), and metal-organic compound CVD (MOCVD). We will discuss the specifics of CVD processing equipment and more CVD materials in Chapter 7. 

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