Silicon dry oxidation kinetics at low temperature in the nanometric range: Modeling and experiment

TL;DR

This paper investigates silicon dry oxidation kinetics at low temperatures in the nanometer range through combined modeling and experiments, highlighting the limitations of traditional models and demonstrating the advantages of a reaction rate approach.

Contribution

It introduces a reaction rate based model for nanometric silicon oxidation and validates it with experimental data, improving understanding of low-temperature oxidation processes.

Findings

Reaction rate approach better predicts nanometric oxide growth.

Traditional models like Deal-Grove are less accurate at this scale.

Experimental results confirm the model's improved accuracy.

Abstract

Kinetics of silicon dry oxidation are investigated theoretically and experimentally at low temperature in the nanometer range where the limits of the Deal and Grove model becomes critical. Based on a fine control of the oxidation process conditions, experiments allow the investigation of the growth kinetics of nanometric oxide layer. The theoretical model is formulated using a reaction rate approach. In this framework, the oxide thickness is estimated with the evolution of the various species during the reaction. Standard oxidation models and the reaction rate approach are confronted with these experiments. The interest of the reaction rate approach to improve silicon oxidation modeling in the nanometer range is clearly demonstrated.