Quantitative analysis of hydrogen in SiO2/SiN/SiO2 stacks using atom probe tomography

We have demonstrated that it is possible to reproducibly quantify hydrogen concentration in the SiN layer of a SiO2/SiN/SiO2 (ONO) stack structure using ultraviolet laser-assisted atom probe tomography (APT). The concentration of hydrogen atoms detected using APT increased gradually during the analysis, which could be explained by the effect of hydrogen adsorption from residual gas in the vacuum chamber onto the specimen surface. The amount of adsorbed hydrogen in the SiN layer was estimated by analyzing another SiN layer with an extremely low hydrogen concentration (