Effects of Pre-Gate Oxidation Cleaning and Gettering Upon The Very Thin Oxide Integrity

Abstract

Various pre-gate oxide cleaning and gettering techniques on the integrity of thin gate oxide were investigated. A 100 Å thick oxide capacitor was used to study its time-dependent breakdown characteristics and minority carrier lifetime. It has been shown that the oxide integrity as measured by time-dependent breakdown and the minority carrier lifetime are very sensitive to the cleaning technique. On the other hand, given adequate cleaning process, different intrinsic gettering schemes may only influence the oxygen precipitation, as well as the minority carrier lifetime, but not the oxide integrity.