Conductive-Mode Atomic Force Microscopy Study of Amorphous Silicon Nitride Thin Films

Authors used conductive-mode AFM to study the electrical properties of amorphous silicon nitride thin films (a-SiN) in order to reveal their electrical properties on the nanometer scale. The I-V characteristics were fitted by the Pool-Frenkel equation, and the physical quantities showed good agreeme...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Japanese Journal of Applied Physics 2003-11, Vol.42 (Part 2, No. 11A), p.L1321-L1323
Main Authors: Aya, Yoichiro, Ando, Atsushi, Yamasaki, Satoshi, Wakisaka, Kenichiro
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Authors used conductive-mode AFM to study the electrical properties of amorphous silicon nitride thin films (a-SiN) in order to reveal their electrical properties on the nanometer scale. The I-V characteristics were fitted by the Pool-Frenkel equation, and the physical quantities showed good agreement with previous reports of a-SiN. The density of trapping centers obtained using this equation had a good agreement with the reported density of dangling bonds of Si in a-SiN, then the conductance was attributed to electron hopping by the dangling bonds. The conductive areas observed in the current image obtained using this method did not depend on the topography. Authors considered that the current image represented the 2-D distribution of the components in the a-SiN films. 14 refs.
ISSN:0021-4922
DOI:10.1143/JJAP.42.L1321