Redeposition in plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition: Silicon nitride film quality ruled by the gas residence time
The requirements on the material properties and growth control of silicon nitride (SiNx) spacer films in transistors are becoming ever more stringent as scaling of transistor structures continues. One method to deposit high-quality films with excellent control is atomic layer deposition (ALD). Howev...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Applied physics letters 2015-07, Vol.107 (1) |
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Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | The requirements on the material properties and growth control of silicon nitride (SiNx) spacer films in transistors are becoming ever more stringent as scaling of transistor structures continues. One method to deposit high-quality films with excellent control is atomic layer deposition (ALD). However, depositing SiNx by ALD has turned out to be very challenging. In this work, it is shown that the plasma gas residence time τ is a key parameter for the deposition of SiNx by plasma-assisted ALD and that this parameter can be linked to a so-called “redeposition effect”. This previously ignored effect, which takes place during the plasma step, is the dissociation of reaction products in the plasma and the subsequent redeposition of reaction-product fragments on the surface. For SiNx ALD using SiH2(NHtBu)2 as precursor and N2 plasma as reactant, the gas residence time τ was found to determine both SiNx film quality and the resulting growth per cycle. It is shown that redeposition can be minimized by using a short residence time resulting in high-quality films with a high wet-etch resistance (i.e., a wet-etch rate of 0.5 nm/min in buffered HF solution). Due to the fundamental nature of the redeposition effect, it is expected to play a role in many more plasma-assisted ALD processes. |
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ISSN: | 0003-6951 1077-3118 |
DOI: | 10.1063/1.4926366 |