Rapid thermal processing of thin gate dielectrics. Oxidation of silicon

A new rapid process for the growth of thin thermal oxide films on crystalline silicon is described. This rapid thermal oxidation (RTO) is performed in a controlled oxygen ambient with the heating provided by tungsten-halogen lamps. The resulting oxides with thicknesses from 40-130 Å have a uniformity of better than 2 percent across the 75-mm wafers. Oxidation times at 1150°C vary from 5 to 30 s. Typical breakdown fields of 100-Å oxide films were 13.8 MV/cm and typical midgap interface state densities were of the order of 1 × 10
¹⁰
eV
^-1
cm
^-2
. The present RTO films have characteristics equal to or better than furnace grown oxides and because of the short temperature-time cycle they have potential applications for submicrometer VLSI.