CONTROL OF BONDED-HYDROGEN IN PLASMA-DEPOSITED SILICON NITRIDES - COMBINED PLASMA-ASSISTED DEPOSITION AND RAPID THERMAL ANNEALING FOR THE FORMATION OF DEVICE-QUALITY NITRIDE LAYERS FOR APPLICATIONS IN MULTILAYER DIELECTRICS

This paper discusses silicon nitride layers for applications in silicon device technologies, and in particular deposited nitride films for gate multi-layer dielectrics for (i) amorphous and microcrystalline silicon (a-Si and mu c-Si, respectively) thin film transistors (TFTs), and (ii) crystalline silicon (c-Si) MOS capacitors and field effect transistors (FETs), A low temperature (300 degrees C) remote plasma-enchanced chemical-vapor deposition process was used to form the silicon nitride films. A materials issue impacting on the targeted applications is the stability of bonded-hydrogen atoms in Si-H and SiN-H bonding groups at the respective TFT and FET processing temperatures.