Thermal silicon nitride

Many of the first papers which discussed the use of (selective) CVD of tungsten for IC applications used conventional hot wall tube CVD reactors [Broadbent et al.44, Pauleau et al.45, Cheung47]. This type of reactor was and still is the workhorse in IC fabs. Excellent films such as TEOS based oxides, thermal silicon-nitride and poly-silicon can be grown in such equipment. Hot wall tube reactors are suitable for these films because such materials stick very well to quartz tubes and are quite transparent to IR radiation of the heating elements. Thus neither particle nor temperature control is a problem. One other major advantage is that high throughputs are typically obtained. 

When you pour boiling water into a cold bottle and discover that the bottom drops out with a smart pop, you have re-invented the standard test for thermal shock resistance. Fracture caused by sudden changes in temperature is a problem with ceramics. But while some (like ordinary glass) will only take a temperature "shock" of 80°C before they break, others (like silicon nitride) will stand a sudden change of 500°C, and this is enough to fit them for use in environments as violent as an internal combustion engine. 

Plasma CVD was first developed in the 1960s for semiconductor applications, notably for the deposition of silicon nitride. The number and variety of applications have expanded greatly ever since and it is now a major process on par with thermal CVD. 

CVD plays an increasingly important part in the design and processing of advanced electronic conductors and insulators as well as related structures, such as diffusion barriers and high thermal-conductivity substrates (heat-sinks). In these areas, materials such as titanium nitride, silicon nitride, silicon oxide, diamond, and aluminum nitride are of particular importance. These compounds are all produced by CVD. 1 1 PI... 

Silicon carbide, SiC [1] and silicon nitride, Si3N4 [2], have been known for some time. Their properties, especially high thermal and chemical stability, hardness, high strength, and a variety of other properties have led to useful applications for both of these materials. 

The other platform is dielectrics, for example, silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, silicon oxynitride, tantalum pentoxide, and titanium dioxide. They can be deposited by various methods, such as plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, thermal evaporation, electron-beam evaporation, and sputtering. There are a number of dielectrics with refractive indices ranging from 1.45 to 2.4, facilitating diverse waveguide designs to satisfy different specification. Dielectrics have two other... 

A cross-sectional schematic of a monolithic gas sensor system featuring a microhotplate is shown in Fig. 2.2. Its fabrication relies on an industrial CMOS-process with subsequent micromachining steps. Diverse thin-film layers, which can be used for electrical insulation and passivation, are available in the CMOS-process. They are denoted dielectric layers and include several silicon-oxide layers such as the thermal field oxide, the contact oxide and the intermetal oxide as well as a silicon-nitride layer that serves as passivation. All these materials exhibit a characteristically low thermal conductivity, so that a membrane, which consists of only the dielectric layers, provides excellent thermal insulation between the bulk-silicon chip and a heated area. The heated area features a resistive heater, a temperature sensor, and the electrodes that contact the deposited sensitive metal oxide. An additional temperature sensor is integrated close to the circuitry on the bulk chip to monitor the overall chip temperature. The membrane is released by etching away the silicon underneath the dielectric layers. Depending on the micromachining procedure, it is possible to leave a silicon island underneath the heated area. Such an island can serve as a heat spreader and also mechanically stabihzes the membrane. The fabrication process will be explained in more detail in Chap 4. 

The main goal of another microhotplate design was the replacement of all CMOS-metal elements within the heated area by materials featuring a better temperature stability. This was accomplished by introducing a novel polysilicon heater layout and a Pt temperature sensor (Sect. 4.3). The Pt-elements had to be passivated for protection and electrical insulation, so that a local deposition of a silicon-nitride passivation through a mask was performed. This silicon-nitride layer also can be varied in its thickness and with regard to its stress characteristics (compressive or tensile). This hotplate allowed for reaching operation temperatures up to 500 °C and it showed a thermal resistance of 7.6 °C/mW. 

Silicon nitride has good strength retention at high temperature and is the most oxidation resistant nitride. Boron nitride [10043-11-5] has excellent thermal shock resistance and is in many ways similar to graphite, except that it is not an electrical conductor. 

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, SiH4, and nitrous oxide, N20, for deposition of silicon nitride. The most common CVD films used are silicon dioxide, silicon nitride, and silicon oxynitrides. 

Nagy, P. B. and Adler, L. (1989). On the origin of increased backward radiation from a liquid-solid interface at the Rayleigh angle. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85,1355-7. [116] Narita, T., Miura, K., Ishikawa, I., and Ishikawa, T. (1990). Measurement of residual thermal stress and its distribution on silicon nitride ceramics joined to metals with scanning acoustic microscopy. /. Japan. Inst. Metals 54,1142-6. [148]... 

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. Figure 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 silicon nitride, and glass (PSG)... 

Materials made of silicon nitride, silicon oxynitride, or sialon-bonded silicon carbide have high thermal shock and corrosion resistance and may be used for pump parts, acid spray nozzles, and in aluminum reduction cells (156—159). A very porous silicon carbide foam has been considered for surface combustion burner plates and filter media. It can also be used as a substrate carrying materials such as boron nitride as planar diffusion source for... 

NISTCERAM National Institute of Standards and Techology Gas Research Institute, Ceramics Division mechanical, physical, electrical, thermal, corrosive, and oxidation properties for alumina nitride, beryllia, boron nitride, silicon carbide, silicon nitride, and zirconia... 

A c-BN - silicon nitride ceramic composite can be produced directly by sintering a mixture of c-BN powder and Si powder in N2 atmosphere. The composites have high resistance against heat, oxidation, and thermal shock [279]. 

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