Silicon nitride

About: Silicon nitride is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 32678 publications have been published within this topic receiving 413599 citations. The topic is also known as: N₄Si₃.

Shallow trench isolation process for high aspect ratio trenches

Abstract: Disclosed is a method of planarizing the surface of a silicon wafer in integrated circuit manufacture where shallow trench isolation techniques are employed. The etched trenches are first coated with a silicon nitride protective liner before the trenches and active area mesas are conformally coated with a layer of silicon oxide. The conformal oxide then is steam annealed to densify the conformal oxide, and then the surface of the silicon wafer is etched and polished back down to the tops of the active area mesas, to form a substantially planar surface.

Transparent ZnO thin film transistor fabricated by sol-gel and chemical bath deposition combination method

Abstract: Top-gate thin film transistors with n-type ZnO active channel were performed under 230°C. Especially, ZnO film was deposited by a combined method of sol-gel and chemical bath deposition without any preactivation for film growth. Silicon nitride and indium tin oxide were used as the gate insulator and the conducting electrodes (source, drain, and gate). These transistors were highly transparent in the visible spectrum, with transmittance as high as 75% to approximately 85% at wavelength from 500to700nm. The optimum device has field-effect mobility of 0.67cm2∕Vs and an on-off ratio more than 107.

CVD syntheses of silicon nitride materials

Abstract: Low hydrogen-content silicon nitride materials are deposited by a variety of CVD techniques, preferably thermal CVD and PECVD, using chemical precursors that contain silicon atoms, nitrogen atoms, or both. A preferred chemical precursor contains one or more N—Si bonds. Another preferred chemical precursor is a mixture of a N-containing chemical precursor with a Si-containing chemical precursor that contains less than 9.5 weight % hydrogen atoms. A preferred embodiment uses a hydrogen source to minimize the halogen content of silicon nitride materials deposited by PECVD.

Remotely-excited fluorine and water vapor etch

Abstract: A method of etching exposed silicon oxide on patterned heterogeneous structures is described and includes a remote plasma etch formed from a fluorine-containing precursor. Plasma effluents from the remote plasma are flowed into a substrate processing region where the plasma effluents combine with water vapor. The chemical reaction resulting from the combination produces reactants which etch the patterned heterogeneous structures to produce, in embodiments, a thin residual structure exhibiting little deformation. The methods may be used to conformally trim silicon oxide while removing little or no silicon, polysilicon, silicon nitride, titanium or titanium nitride. In an exemplary embodiment, the etch processes described herein have been found to remove mold oxide around a thin cylindrical conducting structure without causing the cylindrical structure to significantly deform.

Silicon nitride and oxynitride films

Abstract: The physics and chemistry of amorphous silicon oxynitride films are reviewed. Since the main applications of these materials are in the manufacture of Si-based integrated circuits (ICs), phenomena such as diffusion mechanisms, oxidation kinetics, defects and charge trapping are given special attention. Mature thin-film technologies to form oxynitride layers are in the various types of chemical vapour deposition and thermal processing in NH3 and N2O. Determined by their growth process, oxynitrides contain a certain amount of hydrogen which is shown to play a key role in the reactivity of these materials. Once this is understood, it is possible to relate the properties of a wide range of oxynitrides to their composition and the micro-chemistry involved.