• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.380-384
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• 2012

This paper deals with the recent developments of high thermal conductivity silicon nitride ceramics. First, the factors that reduce the thermal conductivity of silicon nitride are clarified and the potential approaches to realize high thermal conductivity are described. Then, the recent achievements on the silicon nitride fabricated through the reaction bonding and post sintering technique are presented. Because of a smaller amount of impurity oxygen, the obtained thermal conductivity is substantially higher, compared to that of the conventional gas-pressure sintered silicon nitride, while the microstructures and bending strengths are similar to each other between these two samples. Moreover, further improvement of the thermal conductivity is possible by increasing ${\beta}/{\alpha}$ phase ratio of the nitrided sample, resulting in a very high thermal conductivity of 177 W/($m{\cdot}K$) as well as a high fracture toughness of 11.2 $MPa{\cdot}m^{1/2}$.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.483-490
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• 2009

In this paper, a novel low-damage silicon nitride passivation for 100nm InAlAs/InGaAs MHEMTs has been developed using remote ICPCVD. The silicon nitride deposited by ICPCVD showed higher quality, higher density, and lower hydrogen concentration than those of silicon nitride deposited by PECVD. In particular, we successfully minimized the plasma damage by separating the silicon nitride deposition region remotely from ICP generation region, typically with distance of 34cm. The silicon nitride passivation with remote ICPCVD has been successfully demonstrated on GaAs MHEMTs with minimized damage. The passivated devices showed considerable improvement in DC characteristics and also exhibited excellent RF characteristics($f_T$of 200GHz).The devices with remote ICPCVD passivation of 50nm silicon nitride exhibited 22% improvement(535mS/mm to 654mS/mm) of a maximum extrinsic transconductance($g_{m.max}$) and 20% improvement(551mA/mm to 662mA/mm) of a maximum saturation drain current ($I_{DS.max}$) compared to those of unpassivated ones, respectively. The results achieved in this work demonstrate that remote ICPCVD is a suitable candidate for the next-generation MHEMT passivation technique.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.61-66
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• 2010

Silicon nitride is widely used as an engineering ceramics because it has high strength, abrasion resistance and corrosion resistance even at high temperature. However, machining of silicon nitride is difficult due to its high hardness and brittleness. Laser assisted machining(LAM) allows effective cutting using CBN tool by locally heating the cutting part to the softening temperature of YSiAlON using the laser beam. The effect of preheating depending on process parameters were studied to find out the oxidation mechanism. If silicon nitride is sufficiently preheated, the surface is oxidized and $N_2$ gas is formed and escapes from the material, thereby making the cutting process more advantageous. During laser preheating process before machining, high temperature results in strong oxidation which makes the bloating, silicate layers and micro cracks. Using the results of these experiments, preheating characteristics and oxidation behavior were found out.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.301-307
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• 2012

SiAlON glasses are silicates or alumino-silicates, containing Mg, Ca, Y or rare earth (RE) ions as modifiers, in which nitrogen atoms substitute for oxygen atoms in the glass network. These glasses are found as intergranular films and at triple point junctions in silicon nitride ceramics and these grain boundary phases affect their fracture behaviour. This paper provides an overview of the preparation of M-SiAlON glasses and outlines the effects of composition on properties. As nitrogen substitutes for oxygen in SiAlON glasses, increases are observed in glass transition temperatures, viscosities, elastic moduli and microhardness. These property changes are compared with known effects of grain boundary glass chemistry in silicon nitride ceramics. Oxide sintering additives provide conditions for liquid phase sintering, reacting with surface silica on the $Si_3N_4$ particles and some of the nitride to form SiAlON liquid phases which on cooling remain as intergranular glasses. Thermal expansion mismatch between the grain boundary glass and the silicon nitride causes residual stresses in the material which can be determined from bulk SiAlON glass properties. The tensile residual stresses in the glass phase increase with increasing Y:Al ratio and this correlates with increasing fracture toughness as a result of easier debonding at the glass/${\beta}-Si_3N_4$ interface.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.444-449
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• 2010

Transparent ceramics are used in new technology because of their excellent mechanical properties over glasses. Transparent ceramics are nowadays widely used in armor, laser windows, and in high temperature applications. Silicon nitride ceramics have excellent mechanical properties and if transparent silicon nitride is fabricated, it can be widely used. h-BN has a lubricating property and is ductile. Therefore, adding h-BN to silicon nitride ceramics gives a lubricating property and is also machinable. Translucent silicon nitride was fabricated by hot-press sintering (HPS) and 57% transmittance was observed in the near infrared region. A higher wt. % of h-BN in silicon nitride ceramics does not favor transparency. The optical, mechanical, and tribological properties of BN dispersed polycrystalline $Si_3N_4$ ceramics were affected by the density, ${\alpha}:{\beta}$-phase ratio, and content of h-BN in sintered ceramics. The hot pressed samples were prepared from the mixture of $\alpha-Si_3N_4$, AlN, MgO, and h-BN at $1850^{\circ}C$. The composite contained from 0.25 to 2 wt. % BN powder with sintering aids (9% AlN + 3% MgO). A maximum transmittance of 57% was achieved for the 0.25 wt. % BN doped $Si_3N_4$ ceramics. Fracture toughness increased and wear volume and the friction coefficient decreased with an increase in BN content. The properties such as transmittance, density, hardness, and flexural strength decreased with an increase in content of h-BN in silicon nitride ceramics.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.1013-1019
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• 2007

Amorphous silicon and silicon-nitride films were deposited using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method at $150^{\circ}C$. As fraction of $H_2$ in source gas was increased, characteristics of low-temperature silicon-nitride films approached those of conventional high-temperature films; the refractive index approached 1.9 and the ratio of nitrogen-hydrogen bonds to silicon-hydrogen bonds increased. And also, as fraction of $H_2$ in source gas was increased, characteristics of low-temperature silicon films approached those of conventional high-temperature films; refractive index and optical band gap approached 4.2 and 1.8 eV, and $[Si-H]/([Si-H]+[Si-H_2])$ increased. Lower RF power and process-pressure made the amorphous silicon films to be better properties. Increase of $H_2$ ratio seemed as the common factor to get reliable amorphous silicon and silicon-nitride films for thin-film-transistors (TFTs) at low temperature.

• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.287-292
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• 1992

Silicon nitride thin film (SiNx) was deposited onto the 3inch silicon wafer using an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma apparatus. The thin films which were deposited by changing the SiH4N2 gas flow rate ratio at 1.5mTorr without substrate heating were analyzed through the x-ray photo spectroscopy (XPS) and ellipsometer measurements, etc. Silicon nitride thin films prepared by the electron cyclotron resonance plasma chemical vapor deposition method at low substrate temperature (<10$0^{\circ}C$) exhibited excellent physical and electrical properties. The very uniform and good quality silicon nitride thin films were obtained. The characteristics of electron cyclotron resonance plasma were inferred from the analyzed results of the deposited films.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and information Science
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.82-87
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• 1997

Ion-Sensitive Field-Effect Transistors(ISFETs) with LPCVD silicon nitride as a sensitive gate were fabricated on the basis of a CMOS process. The silicon nitride was deposited directly on a poly silicon gate-electrode. Using a specially designed measuring cell, the hydrogen ions sensing properties of the ISFET in liquid could be investigated without any bonding or encapsulation. At first, th sensitivity was estimated by simualtions according to the site-binding theory and the experimental results were analysed and compared with simulated results. The measured dta were in good agreement with the simulated results. The silicon nitride based ISFET has good linearity evaluated from correlation factor ($\geq$0.9998) and a mean pH-sensitivity of 56.8mV/pH. The maximum hysteresis width between forward(pH=3\longrightarrowpH=11)- and backward(pH=11\longrightarrowpH=3) titration was 16.7mV at pH=6.54.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.357-361
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• 2005

Low-stress silicon nitride (LSN) thin films with embedded metal line have been developed as free standing structures to keep microspheres in proper locations and localized heat source for application to a chip-based sensor array for the simultaneous and near-real-time detection of multiple analytes in solution. The LSN film has been utilized as a structural material as well as a hard mask layer for wet anisotropic etching of silicon. The LSN was deposited by LPCVD (Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition) process by varing the ratio of source gas flows. The residual stress of the LSN film was measured by laser curvature method. The residual stress of the LSN film is 6 times lower than that of the stoichiometric silicon nitride film. The test results showed that not only the LSN film but also the stack of LSN layers with embedded metal line could stand without notable deflection.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.53-59
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• 1985

Experiments related to nitriding silicon with addition of $Si_3N_4$ have provided information on the effects of such inclusion on the phase relationships of Reaction Bonded Silicon Nitride. In the current work specimens containing 0-25wt% Si3N4 which have 55.5wt% $\alpha$ 4.5wt% $eta$, 40wt% amorphous phase were nitrided for 7-20 hours at 1300-135$0^{\circ}C$ The evaluation of nitridation was per-formed by means of $\alpha$-and $\beta$-phase contents determination in nitrided specimens, In order to observe nitrided region between silicon and silicon nitride scanning electron microscopy was used to study reacted region between silicon and silicon nitride particle. For this purpose semiconductor-grade silicon wafer single crystal was used as a silicon source. The incorporation of small amount of $Si_3N_4$ powder is contributed to enhancing the rate of formation of $\alpha$-phase.