Meredith J. Williams

The formation of ultrathin silicon oxide films using H2/N2O mixtures

This paper describes a process called N 2 O in situ steam generation, which uses a combustion-like reaction of lean hydrogen in N 2 O to form ultrathin (≈10 ) silicon oxide films on silicon. An important application is the formation of high-integrity gate dielectrics for integrated circuits. The atomic oxygen created through homogeneous reaction plays an important role in growing high-quality oxide films. This paper presents measured oxide-thickness profiles on 200 mm wafers under several processing conditions. Stirred-reactor and boundary-layer models are used to explain and interpret the data. An elementary chemical-reaction mechanism, which is drawn from the combustion literature, provides an excellent representation of this advanced materials process.