Jung-Ho Lee, Heung-Jae Cho and Kwan-Yong Lim
Abstract
Low-temperature ( 400 C) ultrathin ( 3 nm) gate oxynitrides have been formed, without the need to post-anneal, by using radical oxygen and nitrogen in a low-biased high-density plasma utilizing a unique slot-plane-antenna technique. X-ray photoelectron and secondary-ion mass spectroscopies reveal that the high nitrogen concentrations confined within the bulk of oxynitrides stem mostly from the bonding configuration of Si – N = O2. Compared to plasma nitrided thermal oxides, plasma oxynitrides show a better efficiency of nitridation along with the improved chargeto- breakdown and interface characteristics, which allows further scaling down of devices.