Non-contact characterization of several silicon oxides oxynitrides grown by rapid thermal processing

The electrical properties of several potential gate dielectric materials as silicon oxides and oxynitrides with thicknesses of 15-35 Aring have been analyzed by the corona characterization of semiconductor (Cocos) method. The silicon oxides are grown by conventional furnace as well as by wet and radical RT oxidation processes while the silicon oxynitrides represented by reoxidized RT nitride and plasma nitrided RTO films. The influence of the different growth techniques as well as hydrogen and inert post anneals have been studied in order to investigate their influence especially on interface state density and flatband voltage. In case of silicon oxynitride films, time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry was done to determine the content and distribution of oxygen and nitrogen. The preparation free non-contact method of the corona characterization was used to obtain electrical parameters as equivalent oxide thickness, interface state density, flatband voltage and oxide leakage. It could be shown that with this comprehensive set of parameters the in-line monitoring of advanced RT grown gate dielectrics can be performed