Short-range order in non-stoichiometric amorphous silicon oxynitride and silicon-rich nitride

By de-convoluting the Si 2p X-ray photoelectronic spectra, it was found that the short-range order in amorphous silicon oxynitride (SiOxNy) films with different compositions can be quantitatively described by the random bonding model. In this model the SiOxNy consists of five types of randomly distributed tetrahedra and it indicates that metal–oxide–semiconductor transistor with this gate dielectric will not result in any gigantic potential fluctuation in the conduction channel. On the contrary, the structure of silicon-rich silicon nitride SiNx can only be described by the random mixture model where the local composition fluctuations in this film will result in gigantic potential contra-variant fluctuation.