Study on Thin Oxide Growth After Oxygen and Nitrogen Plasma Treatment

• Main Authors: Wen-Pin Chou, 周文彬
• Other Authors: Jen-Chung Lou
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/89715681164783650272

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 電子工程系 === 88 === Thin-film characteristics of plasma treatment on silicon and silicon dioxide were studied in this thesis. Due to the superior electrical properties and thermal stability, silicon dioxide grown by thermal means has been utilized as the main gate-insulator in the MOSFETs for over 40 years. With the aggressive scaling of the dimension in modern devices, the thickness of the silicon dioxide has inevitably approached its physical limits. Thermally grown oxynitrides (SixOyNz) has been received great attention in these years to replace silicon dioxide because of its improved performance and reliability. Plasma-assisted nitridation and oxidation is another attractive vehicle due to its reduced thermal budget and high throughput, which are important in today's deep-submicron era. In this thesis, we investigated the growth rates and mechanisms of the thin films formed by nitrogen and oxygen plasma applied on the silicon. The thermal oxides that were further nitrided by nitrogen plasma and the oxidized plasma nitrides were studied, too. C-V and electrical measurement were used to characterize the samples. In our study, the growth rates of the plasma nitride and oxide are found to be faster than that of the thermal nitride or oxide, and this were due to the high density of the reactants formed in the plasma; and the oxidized plasma nitride (or alternatively, oxygen-annealed plasma nitride) has demonstrated superior reliability as compared with the thermal oxide.