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Deposit hydrogenated silicon nitride by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. A plasma activates a silicon-containing precursor and a nitrogen source, enabling a conformal thin film at a lower substrate temperature than a purely thermal process. Tune gas composition, power and time to control thickness, refractive index, stress and hydrogen content.

The film serves as an antireflection coating and can also provide chemical and field-effect surface passivation. As a simple optical check, a quarter-wave thickness is $d\simeq {\lambda }_{\mathrm{design}}/(4n)$; $d\simeq 75\mathrm{nm}$ and $n\simeq 2$ correspond to a design wavelength near $600\mathrm{nm}$. The textured surface and broadband illumination require a fuller optical optimization, so this check is an order-of-magnitude explanation rather than an exact reflectance calculation.

In physical vapor deposition, material is physically released from a source and transported to the substrate, where it condenses. Three examples are thermal evaporative deposition, electron-beam evaporation and sputtering. Their angular distributions, source heating and energetic bombardment differ, even though all belong to the physical-deposition family.

In chemical vapor deposition, volatile reactants undergo chemical reactions that produce a solid film at or near the substrate, with gaseous products removed. Examples are atmospheric-pressure thermal CVD, low-pressure CVD and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. These are three established process variants, distinguished by pressure and activation method. Surface chemistry, precursor delivery and temperature determine growth, rather than condensation alone.

Atomic layer deposition is a related cyclic surface-reaction method, but need not be counted as a separate conventional CVD example to satisfy the requested three. Reactive sputtering can involve chemistry, so the boundary is best explained by the dominant source and transport mechanism rather than by claiming that a PVD chamber can contain no chemical reactions.