In this work we present the results on the fabrication of thick silicon oxynitride and dioxide films deposited by conventional r.f. direct plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (DPECVD), at temperature as low as 320°C and from (N2O+SiH4) gaseous mixtures. The samples were characterized by profile measurements, ellipsometry measurements, etching rate, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results show that for appropriate N2O/SiH4 flow ratio and SiH4 flow, it is possible to obtain very thick SiO2 and SiOxNy films (up to ∼10 μm) at high deposition rates (∼3 μm/h) and preserving the compositional and structural properties of similar high quality thin films obtained in a previous work (I. Pereyra, M.I. Alayo, J. Non-Cryst. Solids 212 (1997) 225). These thick SiO2 and SiOxNy films, exhibit a very well controlled refractive index, in a short range between ∼1.43 and ∼1.53, which is very attractive to SiO2/SiOxNy based waveguide fabrication. Besides the large thickness, the results show that the films present an etching rate just twice the thermally grown SiO2 rate, therefore lower than the reported values for PECVD SiO2 by other authors (M.S. Haque, H.A. Naseem, W.D. Brown, J. Electrochem. Soc. 142 (1995) 3864). Also etching experiments were performed using reactive ion etching (RIE) equipment on thick silicon oxynitride film grown onto silicon substrates covered by a thick DPECVD SiO2 buffer layer, in order to simulate a waveguide structure (ridge type) fabrication. The results of these tests show that it is possible to define vertical walls in these thick SiOxNy films, which is very important for ridge type waveguides. © 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.