Hydrogenated silicon carbon nitride films obtained by HWCVD, PA-HWCVD and PECVD techniques I. Ferreira a, * , E. Fortunato a , P. Vilarinho b , A.S. Viana c , A.R. Ramos d , E. Alves d , R. Martins a a CENIMAT, Departamento de Cie ˆncia dos Materiais da Faculdade de Cie ˆncias e Tecnologia da UNL and CEMOP-UNINOVA Campus da FCT-UNL, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal b CICECO, Departamento de Engenharia Cera ˆmica e do Vidro da Universidade de Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal c ICAT, laborato ´ rio de SPM da Faculdade de Cie ˆncias, Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal d ITN, Instituto Tecnolo ´ gico e Nuclear, Estrada Nacional 10, 2686-953 Sacave ´m, Portugal Available online 17 April 2006 Abstract Hydrogenated silicon carbon nitride (SiCN:H) thin film alloys were produced by hot wire (HWCVD), plasma assisted hot wire (PA- HWCVD) and plasma enhanced chemical vapor (PECVD) deposition techniques using a Ni buffer layer as catalyst for inducing crys- tallization. The silicon carbon nitride films were grown using C 2 H 4 , SiH 4 and NH 3 gas mixtures and a deposition temperature of 300 °C. Prior to the deposition of the SiCN:H film a hydrogen etching of 10 min was performed in order to etch the catalyst material and to facilitate the crystallization. We report the influence of each deposition process on compositional, structural and morphological prop- erties of the films. Scanning Electron Microscope-SEM and Atomic Force Measurement-AFM images show their morphology; the chem- ical composition was obtained by Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry-RBS, Elastic Recoil Detection-ERD and the structure by Infrared-IR analysis. The thickness of the catalyst material determines the growth process and whether or not islands form. The produc- tion of micro-structured SiCN:H films is also dependent on the gas pressure, gas mixture and deposition process used. Ó 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 81.05.Gc; 73.61.Jc; 81.15.z Keywords: Amorphous semiconductors; Composition; Films and coatings; FTIR measurements; Nitrogen-containing glass 1. Introduction The exceptional mechanical, tribological and optical properties of ternary SiCN thin film alloys make them suit- able for a wide range of applications. Profiting of the wide band gap controllability between 5 eV, for SiN, and 2.8 eV, for SiC [1], SiCN films can be used in optoelectronic appli- cations such UV detection [2,3] or low-voltage white–blue electroluminescence devices [4]. Due to its low dielectric constant k, below 5, SiCN films have been successfully applied in the protection of metal interconnection of ultra large-scale integrated circuit (ULSI) [5] as etch stop and hardmask. Crystalline SiCN films were employed in high breakdown-voltage heterojunction diodes for high-temper- ature [6]. Applications of SiCN to MEMS have been also reported [7] making use of its exceptional mechanical prop- erties like high hardness in the range of SiC and SiN mate- rials 30 GPa [1]. Adding together a good chemical resistance make this ternary alloy particularly interesting for tribological applications. Several processes were used to produce amorphous or crystalline SiCN thin films alloys. Amorphous SiCN films are produced frequently by PECVD-like techniques using substrate temperatures below 600 °C, while crystalline SiCN films reported have principal deposition process 0022-3093/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jnoncrysol.2006.02.025 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 21 294 8564; fax: +351 21 295 7810. E-mail address: imf@fct.unl.pt (I. Ferreira). www.elsevier.com/locate/jnoncrysol Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 352 (2006) 1361–1366