Characterization of ultrathin SiO/sub 2/ films obtained by room temperature plasma oxidation of silicon

The continuous scaling down for the MOSFETS has been very aggressive in the last years, specially for the gate dielectric. For the next technology nodes dielectric films less than 2 nm are required, leading to the necessity of controllable dielectric preparation techniques. Recently we demonstrated that the Room Temperature Plasma Oxidation (RTPO) of silicon is a possible technique to obtain this kind of films. In this contribution we present our new results on RTPO of silicon using O/sub 2/ as gas source in a Parallel-Plate reactor. We also present J-V and roughness measurements of MOS structures obtained by this technique using both, O/sub 2/ and N/sub 2/O, as reactive gas. Results show that direct-tunneling is the main transport mechanism observed and the current density corresponds to theoretical calculations. Roughness observed is lower than 0.2 nm.