Thin tunnel oxide grown on silicon substrate pretreated by CF₄ plasma

Abstract

High tunneling current and large resistance against stress were the main issue of tunnel oxide for scaling down the operation voltage of EEPROMs. In this letter, thin-tunnel oxides grown on a CF 4 pretreated silicon substrate were prepared and investigated for the first time. The fabricated oxide has about three orders of tunneling current higher than that of control one; furthermore, the stress induced anomalous and low electric field leakage currents were greatly suppressed. The improvement could be contributed to F-incorporation in oxide. This type of oxide is suitable for fabricating low-voltage EEPROMs and less process complexity was added.Index Terms-Anomalous current, CF 4 fluorinated oxide, lowvoltage EEPROM, plasma pretreatment, SILC, tunnel oxide.

Growing High-Performance Tunneling Oxide by CF[sub 4] Plasma Pretreatment

“…10,12 Recently, the authors reported a simple fabrication process to grow fluorinated oxides with a high tunneling current and low leakage current. 13 This study investigates the electrical and physical characteristics of MOSFETs with this fluorinated oxide, pretreated with CF 4 plasma.…”