Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1670993 | Thin Solid Films | 2010 | 10 Pages |
Abstract
The apparent fracture toughness for a series of plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition SiNx:H films with intrinsic film stress ranging from 300Â MPa tensile to 1Â GPa compressive was measured using nanoindentation. The nanoindentation results show the measured fracture toughness for these films can vary from as high as >Â 8Â MPaâ
âm for films in compression to as low as <Â 0.5Â MPaâ
âm for the films in tension. Other film properties such as density, Young's modulus, and hydrogen content were also measured and not observed to correlate as strongly with the measured fracture toughness values. Various theoretical corrections proposed to account for the presence of intrinsic or residual stresses in nanoindent fracture toughness measurements were evaluated and found to severely underestimate the impact of intrinsic stresses at thicknesses â¤Â 3 μm. However, regression analysis indicated a simple linear correlation between the apparent fracture toughness and intrinsic film stress. Based on this linear trend, a stress free/intrinsic fracture toughness of 1.8 ± 0.7 MPaâ
âm was determined for the SiNx:H films.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Materials Science
Nanotechnology
Authors
Sean King, Rosalie Chu, Guanghai Xu, Jennifer Huening,