Surface chemical characterization by Auger signal decomposition: Silicon nitride

Abstract

The silicon-L 23VV Auger signals from both plasma-deposited silicon nitride and pyrolytically-deposited silicon oxynitride films have been synthesized using experimentally determined component signals representing Si-Si, Si-N, Si-H and Si-O bonding. All of the signals had been corrected for loss features by background subtraction and loss deconvolution and were in the integral, N( E), mode. The accuracy with which this curve synthesis technique fits the Auger spectra for this type of material in terms of differing states of chemical bonding indicates that silicon nitride/oxynitride films deposited by conventional methods are simple mixtures of elemental Si and two component Si-X (X=N, O and H) systems. Meaningful use of these techniques of curve decomposition/synthesis for extracting chemical bonding information depends strongly on working with a complete set of component curves, all of which have good signal-to-noise statistics and accurate energy calibrations.