Abstract
We report a new effect for the SiO2 Si system, phonon-energy-coupling enhancement. The vibrational modes of the Si-Si and Si-O bonds exhibit enhanced energy coupling when the rapid thermal processing (RTP) is directly applied to the SiO2 Si system. With a combination of the RTP and deuterium (D) anneal, the strongest coupling among the Si-D, Si-Si, and Si-O bonds was observed. It is shown that not only Si-D bonds but also Si-O bonds have been strengthened dramatically when this effect is applied directly to the oxide, leading to an enhanced robustness of the oxide structure. The gate leakage current has been reduced by five orders of magnitude for thin oxides (2.2 nm) and two orders of magnitude for thick oxides (>3 nm). The breakdown voltage has been improved by ∼30%
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 082905 |
| Journal | Applied Physics Letters |
| Volume | 88 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2006 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research is supported by National Science Foundation (Nos. ECS-0093156 and EPS-0447479). The authors thank Dr. Chandan Samantaray, Pangleen Ong, and Wei Wen for technical assistance. They also thank Ross M. Boyle of Thermo Electron Corporation and Si-Chen Lee of National Taiwan University for helpful suggestions.
Copyright:
Copyright 2012 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)