Abstract
The complementary techniques of nuclear reaction analysis and infrared absorption were used to study the concentration profiles and chemical bonding of hydrogen in silicon nitride for different preparation and annealing conditions. Silicon nitride prepared by chemical vapor deposition from ammonia-silane mixtures is shown to have hydrogen concentrations of 8.1 and 6.5 at.% for deposition temperatures of 750 and 900‡C, respectively. Plasma deposition at 300‡C from these gases result in hydrogen concentrations of ~22 at.%. Comparison of nuclear reaction analysis and infrared absorption measurements after isothermal annealing shows that all of the hydrogen retained in the films remains bonded to either silicon or nitrogen and that hydrogen release from the material on annealing is governed by various trap energies involving at least one Si-H and two N-H traps. Reasonable estimates of the hydrogen release rates can be made from the effective diffusion coefficient obtained from measurements of the spreading of the implanted hydrogen distribution upon annealing.
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This article sponsored by the U. S. Department of Energy under Contract AT(29-1)-789.
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Peercy, P.S., Stein, H.J., Doyle, B.L. et al. Hydrogen concentration profiles and chemical bonding in silicon nitride. J. Electron. Mater. 8, 11–24 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02655637
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02655637