The effect of hydrogen- and oxygen-plasma treatments on dielectric properties of amorphous carbon nitride films

摘要

Amorphous carbon nitride (a-CN_x) films made by a reactive sputtering of a carbon target with nitrogen plasma shows high resistivity and high electrical breakdown field. Therefore, a-CN_x is a good material as a dielectric material. In this paper, the effects of hydrogen-plasma and oxygen-plasma treatment to the dielectric properties of a-CN_x films were studied, discussed and compared. A cyclic process of the deposition of a thin a-CN_x film and hydrogen- and oxygen-plasma treatment, which is called the layer-by-layer process (LL), were used to make LLa-CN_x and LLa-CN_xO_y films, respectively. Comparing the results of capacitance made of a-CN_x, LLa-CN_x, and LLa-CN_xO_y the most effective treatment to get smaller dielectric constant materials at present was to use hydrogen plasma treatment.