Electronic Grade Silicon Nitride Films on Bulk Silicon.

Abstract : The production of short-channel Metal-Insulator-Semi-conductor (MIS) transistors will necessitate the use of gate insulators which can be made substantially thinner than layers of silicon dioxide can be grown. One possible insulator would be thermally grown silicon nitride. The use of silicon nitride insulators could prove to be advantageous in the development of Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits (VLSIC's) since silicon nitride offers a slightly higher dielectric constant and is a better passivation layer than silicon dioxide. Transistors fabricated using thin thermally grown silicon nitride could possibly be radiation hard. The objectives of this project were to: design and build an open tube system capable of thermally growing silicon nitride on silicon using ammonia as the reactant gas; study the growth parameters of the system, optimize growth conditions and produce good thermal silicon nitride films on silicon; and fabricate simple capacitors and transistors using the silicon nitride films.