Thin films of amorphous silicon oxide and silicon nitride are routinely used as gate dielectrics in silicon-based microelectronic devices. It is valuable to be able to image them and measure their thicknesses quickly and accurately. This brief note describes conditions that can be used to obtain accurate and reproducible TEM images of oxide-nitride-oxide (ONO) thin films.

Obtaining adequate contrast differences between oxide and nitride is not trivial because they have the same average atomic number, and both phases are amorphous. As stoichiometric compounds, both SiO2 and Si3N4 would have average atomic numbers equal to 10. For SiO2, (14+2(8))/3=10, and for Si3N4, (3(14)+4(7))/7=10. Thus, the atomic number contrast between these two is weak or nonexistent. Similarly, the amorphous character prevents the use of conventional diffraction contrast techniques.

However, the density of Si3N4 (3.2 g/cm3) is considerably greater than the density of SiO2 (2.6 g/cm3), reflecting the higher average coordination of N compared with O.