Improved electrical properties of Germanium MOS capacitors with gate dielectric grown in wet-NO ambient

Wet-NO oxidation with or without wet NH/sub 3/ pretreatment is used to grow GeON gate dielectric on Ge substrate. As compared to dry NO oxidation, negligible growth of GeO/sub x/ interlayer and, thus, a near-perfect GeON dielectric can be obtained by the wet-NO oxidation. As a result, MOS capacitors prepared by this method show greatly reduced interface-state and oxide-charge densities and gate-leakage current. This should be attributed to the hydrolyzable property of GeO/sub x/ in water-containing atmosphere.