Thin SiO2 insulators grown by rapid thermal oxidation of silicon

Abstract

Rapid thermal oxidation of 〈100〉 silicon in dry oxygen ambient has been performed in a lamp-heated rapid thermal processing system. For the first time we report fairly extensive experimental results on the initial regime of thermal oxidation of silicon by the rapid thermal oxidation technique. The results clearly indicate the nonlinear behavior of the rapid thermal oxidation growth kinetics in the short time regime, in contrast to some recent rapid thermal oxidation data in the literature which suggested linear growth kinetics. The kinetics data show an increasing growth rate as the rapid thermal oxidation time is reduced, the highest oxidation rate being for the shortest oxidation time. It is also revealed that simple extrapolation of the existing long time thin oxide growth models to the short time rapid thermal oxidation regime does not give a sufficiently precise prediction of the kinetics in the short time regime where other transient physical processes besides simple one-species oxidant diffusion and interface reaction may play an important role.