Thin Solid Films, Vol.428, No.1-2, 216-222, 2003
Non-destructive probing of interfacial oxidation and nitridation states at RTP Si-oxides
The quality of the SiO2/Si interface is of crucial importance in the development and performance of sub 0.1 mum technologies. The knowledge of the chemical composition of the interface is an important piece of information in the preparation of ultra-thin oxides and high-k dielectrics, in order to maintain a high-quality interface and channel mobility. Here we report on investigations of 2 nm oxide layers formed by a RTP process under various gas mixtures containing N2O and NH3 at different concentrations. We studied the SiO2/Si(001) interface by a non-destructive depth profiling using Synchrotron radiation photoelectron spectroscopy. We determine the thickness of the oxide layer, the relative content and chemical state of nitrogen within the oxide, the thickness of the interface layer, and the relative abundance of Si intermediate oxides within. In all systems we find the thickness of the intermediate layer to be approximately 0.17 nm. The intermediate layer contains Si atoms in the oxidation states +1, +2 and +3 with similar relative abundance. Nitrogen is found predominantly close to the intermediate layer forming Si-N as well as Si-N-O bonds. Within the oxide there are only spurious nitrogen content with predominately Si-N-O bonds. Our method is able to detect a nitrogen content within the intermediate layer as low as approximately 5%.