Stoichiometric silicon nitride films were deposited by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition from the SiHCl3-NH3-H-2-Ar system in a hot wall reactor at pressures ranging from 0.3 to 2 kPa. The films are amorphous for deposition temperatures up to 1000 degrees C and crystalline, in the alpha-form, at 1200 degrees C and above. A method for evaluating the internal stresses based on the curvature of the silicon substrate wafer and the resulting silicon Raman peak shift was developed. Some amorphous films exhibit high internal tensile stresses that can lead to cracking during deposition depending on the mechanism and effective precursors involved. Residual stresses can thus be reduced and cracking avoided by, in descending order of importance, reducing the concentration of reactive gases through dilution, increasing the deposition temperature and decreasing the total pressure. The effects of these parameters on the intrinsic stresses were related to the amount of residual hydrogen successively incorporated and thermally released during the growth of the coating according to the Noskov's model.