Pulsed radio frequency plasma deposition of a-SiNx:H alloys: Film properties, growth mechanism, and applications
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this work, we propose a fabrication process of a-SiNx:H alloys by pulsing the radio frequency (rf) signal in a low pressure plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system. The characteristics of the films can be controlled simply by adjusting the duty cycle of the pulsed rf power, while keeping the N2∕SiH4 gas mixture constant. Spectroscopic ellipsometry analysis in the ultraviolet-visible-near infrared and far infrared ranges, atomic force microscopy, and elastic recoil detection reveal strong variations in the optical properties (1.88⩽n⩽2.75, 10−4⩽k⩽5×10−2 at 550nm), optical gap (4.01eV⩽Eg⩽1.95eV), microstructural characteristics (1.3nm⩽surfaceroughness⩽8.3nm), and chemical composition (0.47⩽x⩽1.35) of the coatings as a function of duty cycle. This behavior is interpreted in terms of radical concentration changes in the gas phase, as well as variation in the average ion bombardment energy at the film surface, leading to modifications of both chemical and physical mechanisms that sustain the film growth. Using the control of duty cycle, we fabricated two types of a-SiNx:H-based thin film devices, namely, (i) a model Fabry-Perot optical filter deposited on plastic substrate and (ii) a superlattice structure displaying a photoluminescence signal four times higher than the reference single layer. These two examples of applications point out the main advantages of this pulsed rf PECVD process, in particular, low deposition temperature, reproducibility, versatility, and ease of use.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".