Thin Gate Oxides over Nitrogen Implanted Silicon

Here we study the effects of implanting nitrogen (N’) into the substr e prior to thermal oxidation. We found that for implant doses higher than 1x1014 /cm2 the oxidation rate is reduced between 10% and 75%. Also, the oxide thickness uniformity across the substrates was found to be degraded after the implantation, even though better uniformity was expected. Oxide characterization will be performed to compare the implanted areas to bare Si regions. The reported benefits of incorporating nitrogen into Si make this an interesting study for future generations of gate oxides