Parameter Study by Infrared and Morphological Investigations of Plasma-Polymerised Thin Silicon Nitride Films Deposited with the Plasmodul

The presented low‐pressure microwave plasma device Plasmodul® is a flexible and powerful tool for the deposition of large area barrier coatings based on silicon nitride. The chemical film composition of the coatings can be derived from FT‐IR analysis of the characteristic absorption bands by observation of the band shifts, intensities and shapes. A columnar morphology of the coatings can be associated with the dominance of amino groups in the coating, whereas a grainy structure is related to silane groups. The transfer of the results of the parameter analysis to the value mean energy per molecule Emol shows that the deposition rate gives a set of curves while other film properties are arbitrary.