Deposition and annealing temperature effects on silicon carbon nitride chemical, structural and optical properties

Abstract

Crystalline Silicon carbon embedded in amorphous silicon carbon nitride have been deposited by micro-wave plasma assisted chemical vapour deposition in HMDSN/H₂/Ar mixture by varying the deposition temperature. The deposited films have been analysed before and after annealing in Ar gas at different temperatures. The films structure and grains size have been determined by XRD. The films crystallinity increases and the SiC nanocrystallites embedded in the amorphous SiCN average grains size increases from 2 to 9 nm when the deposition temperature increases. The number of SiN and SiC bonds obtained by FTIR also increase when the deposition temperature increases. High photoluminescence intensity observed in the visible decreases when the annealing temperature increases correlated probably with the SiCN nano particles and SiC nanocrystallites size and density.