Growth and characterization of silicon nitride films for optoelectronics applications

Abstract Silicon nitride (Si3N4) films have been deposited by thermal-CVD system and characterized by the ellipsometry, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive analysis of X-ray (EDAX). The present paper reports the effect of deposition temperature on the physical and optical properties of deposited Si3N4 films. The stress of the film has been observed to be tensile in nature and it is found to be decreased by increasing the deposition temperature through ellipsometric study. The increase in refractive index of the film has been observed with increasing deposition temperature. The Si–H, N–H and Si–N–Si stretching characteristic peaks of Si3N4 films have been observed with significant intensities by using FTIR spectroscopy. The peak positions of Si–N–Si stretching absorption band and the corresponding full width at half maxima (FWHM) have also been analyzed. The FWHM observed to be increasing on corresponding increase in the deposition temperature, which indicates the improvement in the deposited films quality. However, films deposited in the temperature range of 780–850 °C, have some amount of H contents. The total H concentration in the films decreases with corresponding increase in deposition temperature, which reveals that the densification of deposited films increases on increasing the deposition temperature. The SEM and EDAX have been used to carry the morphological and compositional analysis of the deposited films, respectively.