Mechanical properties characterization of PECVD nitride films with rapid thermal annealing using finite element simulation

This paper presents the development of a new model for extracting elastic modulus from nanoindentation testing data and its subsequent application for deterimining the Young's modulus of plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposited (PECVD) silicon nitride films after rapid thermal annealing (RTA), processed between 400 and 800°C. Primary test data indicate that the modulus varied significantly with different RTA temperatures. However, the traditional data reduction scheme cannot exclude the substrate effect and it results in depth-dependent modulus. In this work, the substrate effect can be significantly reduced by the proposed model and the accurate data reduction implies that it is possible to provide more understanding to accurate correlate the fabrication process parameters and the resulted mechanical behavior of thin films in the future.