Interface studies of silicon nitride dielectric layers

Silicon nitride is currently used as the dielectric in dynamic random access memory storage capacitors. The needs in terms of lifetime result in growing nitride that has a minimum leakage current while having the maximum electrical strength such as electrical field to breakdown or injected charge to breakdown. In this paper, we studied silicon nitrides grown by low pressure chemical vapor deposition and the influence of process conditions such as total pressure or gas ratio over electrical reliability of these dielectrics. We show that the process condition leading to the smallest nucleation time have the smoother layers as well as the most reliable dielectric.