4.2 Applications for silica thin films

Introduction

While the physical properties of silica make it suitable for use in protective and optical coating applications, the biggest application of insulating SiO ₂ thin films is undoubtedly in semiconductor devices, in which the insulator performs a number of specific tasks, including: surface passivation, field effect transistor (FET) gate layer, isolation layers, planarization and packaging.

The term insulator generally refers to a material that exhibits low thermal or electrical conductivity; electrically insulating materials are also called dielectrics. It is in regard to the high resistance to the flow of an electric current that SiO ₂ thin films are of the greatest commercial importance. The dielectric constant (ε) is a measure of a dielectric materials ability to store charge, and is characterized by the electrostatic energy stored per unit volume across a unit potential gradient. The magnitude of ε is an indication of the degree of polarization or charge displacement within a material. The dielectric constant for air is 1, and for ionic solids is generally in the range of 5 - 10. Dielectric constants are defined as the ratio of the material’s capacitance to that of air, i.e., [link] . The dielectric constant for silicon dioxide ranges from 3.9 to 4.9, for thermally and plasma CVD grown films, respectively.

An insulating layer is a film or deposited layer of dielectric material separating or covering conductive layers. Ideally, in these application an insulating material should have a surface resistivity of greater than 10 ¹³ Ω/cm ² or a volume resistivity of greater than 10 ¹¹ Ω.cm. However, for some applications, lower values are acceptable; an electrical insulator is generally accepted to have a resistivity greater than 10 ⁵ Ω.cm. CVD SiO ₂ thin films have a resistivity of 10 ⁶ - 10 ¹⁶ Ω.cm, depending on the film growth method.

As a consequence of its dielectric properties SiO ₂ , and related silicas, are used for isolating conducting layers, to facilitate the diffusion of dopants from doped oxides, as diffusion and ion implantation masks, capping doped films to prevent loss of dopant, for gettering impurities, for protection against moisture and oxidation, and for electronic passivation. Of the many methods used for the deposition of thin films, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is most often used for semiconductor processing. In order to appreciate the unique problems associated with the CVD of insulating SiO ₂ thin films it is worth first reviewing some of their applications. Summarized below are three areas of greatest importance to the fabrication of contemporary semiconductor devices: isolation and gate insulation, passivation, and planarization.

Device isolation and gate insulation

A microcircuit may be described as a collection of devices each consisting of "an assembly of active and passive components, interconnected within a monolithic block of semiconducting material". Each device is required to be isolated from adjacent devices in order to allow for maximum efficiency of the overall circuit. Furthermore within a device, contacts must also be electrically isolated. While there are a number of methods for isolating individual devices within a circuit (reverse-biased junctions, mesa isolation, use of semi-insulating substrates, and oxide isolation), the isolation of the active components in a single device is almost exclusively accomplished by the deposition of an insulator.