Rapid Thermal/Plasma Processing for In-Situ Dielectric Engineering (Invited)

ABSTRACTRapid thermal processing of silicon in oxygen and ammonia ambients is an attractive technique for the growth of thin dielectrics such as silicon nitride, silicon dioxide, nitrided oxides, oxidized nitrides, and application-specific (composition-tailored) insulators. Multicycle rapid thermal growth processes are suitable for dielectric engineering and in-situformation of thin layered insulators with a variety of controllable oxygen and nitrogen compositional depth profiles by appropriate design of the temperature and ambient gas cycles. The growth and electrical properties of various dielectrics rapidly grown by the state-of-the-art techniques and their corresponding device performance are examined. Rapid thermal processing and microwave plasma generation have been combined in a novel custom-made multipurpose reactor for rapid plasma-enhanced multiprocessing of Si, Ge, and GaAs. Thin germanium nitride dielectrics can be formed by rapid thermal or plasma nitridation for germanium CMOS applications. Combination of in-situ rapid plasma nitridation followed by silicon nitride deposition may prove to be effective for MIS structures and surface passivation on GaAs. These new applications of rapid thermal/plasma processing are additional steps towards realization of fully RTP-based Si VLSI fabrication processes and development of new devices and technologies on other semiconductor materials.