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Comparative Evaluation of Ultrathin Mask Layers of SiO 2 , SiO x N y and SiN x for Selective Area Growth of Si

1998; Institute of Physics; Volume: 37; Issue: 7R Linguagem: Inglês

10.1143/jjap.37.4204

1347-4065

Doo-Sup Hwang, Tetsuji Yasuda, Kazuyuki Ikuta, Satoshi Yamasaki, Kazunobu Tanaka,

Silicon and Solar Cell Technologies

Ultrathin SiO 2 and SiN x layers on Si are potential mask materials for nanoscale selective-area chemical vapor deposition (CVD) in reduced dimension. This study investigates the mask-material dependence of Si nucleation processes on these ultrathin layers. Thin layers of SiO 2 , SiN x and SiO x N y were formed by plasma oxidation and nitridation. They were subjected to CVD processing without exposure to air, which prevented the results from being affected by surface contamination. Incubation time for nucleation was checked by both in-line Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). In the case of ultrahigh vacuum CVD (UHV-CVD) at 853 K, the incubation time for nucleation decreased in the order of SiO 2 , SiO x N y and SiN x . In the case of flow-modulated plasma-enhanced CVD (FM-PECVD) at 473 K, Si growth did not depend on the kind of the mask material. Direct electron-beam patterning of this mask layer is briefly reported. Based on the results presented, a novel bilayer mask structure is proposed.