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Indentation-induced delamination of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon nitride film on gallium arsenide substrate

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Abstract

Nanoindentation was performed on amorphous silicon nitride films of different thicknesses deposited on gallium arsenide (GaAs) (001) substrates using a conical indenter. Both “pop-in” and ‘pop-out’ were observed from the load-displacement curves when the indentation load exceeded a critical value. Pop-in occurring during loading is associated with plane-slip in the GaAs substrate, and pop-out during unloading is attributed to the interfacial delamination between the film and the substrate. Finite element modeling (FEM) was used to analyze the stress evolution during unloading. The FEM results showed that the stress at the interface evolved from compressive to tensile status during the withdrawal of indentation load, and the interfacial debonding was induced at a critical tensile stress, which is consistent with the pop-out observed. A deformation model for interpreting the pop-in and pop-out events is thereby proposed.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of WIN Semiconductors Co. and Australian Research Council (ARC). Mr. Dennis Williams and Dr. Jerome Wu are acknowledged for their valuable comments and TEM assistance. HH is financially supported by ARC under the Future Fellow Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, The University of Queensland, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Mingyuan Lu, Hongtao Xie & Han Huang

  2. Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Queensland, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Jin Zou

  3. State Key Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, Hunan, China

    Jin Zou & Yuehui He

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  1. Mingyuan Lu
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  2. Hongtao Xie
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Correspondence to Han Huang.

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Lu, M., Xie, H., Huang, H. et al. Indentation-induced delamination of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition silicon nitride film on gallium arsenide substrate. Journal of Materials Research 28, 1047–1055 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2013.31

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2013.31

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