Remote plasma based deposition of oxygen doped silicon carbide films
AssigneeLam Research Corporation
InventorBhadri N. Varadarajan
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Abstract
Disclosed are methods and systems for providing oxygen doped silicon carbide. A layer of oxygen doped silicon carbide can be provided under process conditions that employ one or more silicon-containing precursors that have one or more silicon-hydrogen bonds and/or silicon-silicon bonds. The silicon-containing precursors may also have one or more silicon-oxygen bonds and/or silicon-carbon bonds. One or more radical species in a substantially low energy state can react with the silicon-containing precursors to form the oxygen doped silicon carbide film. The one or more radical species can be formed in a remote plasma source.
Claims12
A method of depositing oxygen doped silicon carbide (SiCO) film, the method comprising:
- providing a substrate;
- flowing one or more silicon-containing precursors onto the substrate, wherein each of the one or more silicon-containing precursors has (i) one or more silicon-hydrogen bonds and/or silicon-silicon bonds and (ii) one or more silicon-oxygen bonds and one or more silicon-carbon bonds;
- flowing a source gas into a remote plasma source;
- generating, from the source gas, radicals of hydrogen in the remote plasma source;
- and
- introducing the radicals of hydrogen onto the substrate, wherein at least 90% of the radicals are radicals of hydrogen in a ground state that react with the one or more silicon-containing precursor to form SiCO film on the substrate under conditions that break one or both of silicon-hydrogen bonds and silicon-silicon bonds but preserve the silicon-oxygen bonds and the silicon-carbon bonds, wherein the SiCO film has an effective dielectric constant greater than 4.0, wherein the SiCO film is deposited at an operating temperature between 250° C. and 400° C.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.