Plasma emission spectroscopy and its relation to the refractive index of silicon nitride thin films deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering

In this work, we present a thorough study on the relation between the plasma emission and the change of the silicon nitride thin films refractive index. Thin films were grown by reactive magnetron direct current sputtering technique and deposited onto silicon wafers at different fluxes of Ar and N₂ and at different working pressures. This procedure, at certain deposition parameters, produced poor quality films, i.e. films with refractive index other than pure Si₃N₄ films. The emission of the plasma was interrogated in real time by means of optical emission spectroscopy (OES) observing at the vicinity of the trget location. In addition, optical properties of the films were measured by in situ ellipsometric-spectroscopy and then correlated with OES observations. Changes in the film refractive index could be deduced from changes in plasma emission applying a principal component analysis. (paper)