Improving the reliability and the insulation properties of gate oxide in the gate injection mode by using a new procedure of (100) Si surface and Si/SiO/sub 2/ interface treatments

A new two-step processing combination, for MOS devices improvement, is presented. It is composed of a pregate oxidation of (100) Si surface atomic scale flattening, which improves only the device breakdown reliability. Adding a postgate oxidation annealing step, using nitrogen monoxide (NO) gas mixture, reduces the degradation of the leakage current, which results from current stress application. A MOSFET with a gate oxide grown on an atomic scale flattened Si surface, exhibits a superior I/sub D/-V/sub D/ characteristics, with respect to MOSFET fabricated on conventionally treated Si surface.