Deposition mechanism of sputtered amorphous carbon nitride thin film

We report in this study a deposition mechanism that describes the interaction of plasma species with the growing amorphous carbon nitride film (a-CNx). The samples were deposited by radio frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering on crystalline silicon, under different values of RF power. Plasma characterisation was performed using mass spectroscopy (MS) and the influence of the process parameters on the chemical fragmentation of species, present in the plasma, was investigated. Nitrogen incorporation in the a-CNx films was analyzed using nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) measurements correlated with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results. The deposition mechanism proposed in this work can well describe surface processes and the resulting composition and chemical bonding of the deposited a-CNx films. # 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved