Growth front roughening in silicon nitride films by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition

The dynamic roughening of amorphous silicon nitride growth front prepared by a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition is presented. Morphology of the films grown at different substrate temperatures (from 50 to 350 °C) for various lengths of deposition time was measured ex situ using atomic force microscopy. The dynamic scaling exponents are measured as α∼0.77, β∼0.40, and 1/z∼0.28, and do not change significantly under the investigated substrate temperature range. An attempt has been made to describe the plasma growth process using a multiparticle reemission model where the incident flux distribution, sticking coefficient, shadowing, surface diffusion, and desorption mechanisms all contributed to the growing morphology.