Highly Reliable Low Temperature Ultrathin Oxides Grown Using N2O Plasma

In this paper, the N2O plasma oxides in-situ grown on CF4 plasma pretreated silicon substrate is proposed and demonstrated having excellent characteristics. Those are precise thickness control, low temperature fabrication, low leakage current, and high reliability. Those good features will enhance the scaling down ability of CMOS devices. The mechanisms that make the process success are also discussed in this paper. Those achievements are caused from the incorporations of nitrogen and fluorine. Owing to the incorporations, the leakage current and the reliability are largely improved. It could be addressed that the low temperature oxides grown by N2O plasma are very attractive for novel CMOS VLSI circuit manufacturing; especially for the oxides grown on the CF4 plasma pre-treated substrates. Key-Words: N2O plasma, CF4 plasma pretreatment, VLSI circuit, thin nitrided oxides