Reduction in leakage current of low-temperature thin-gate oxide by repeated spike oxidation technique

A novel repeated spike oxidation (RSO) technique had been used to grow low-temperature thin-gate oxide. Around the similar effective oxide thickness extracted from the capacitance-voltage (C-V) curves under quantum mechanical effect consideration, the leakage currents of RSO samples were near one order of magnitude lower than those of typical ones. Flat band voltage shift or electron trapping in RSO oxides during current-voltage (I-V) measurement had not been observed. The reduction of interface state densities and the improvement in oxide uniformity would be the possible reasons for the reduction in leakage currents of RSO samples.