Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor-Diode Characteristics with SiO₂ Films Formed by Oxidation and Sputtering Using Electron-Cyclotron-Resonance-Plasma Stream

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The characteristics of oxidation using an electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR)-plasma stream and metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) diodes were studied. Single-layer SiO 2 films and stacked SiO 2 /SiO 2 films were formed by oxidation and sputtering. The ECR-plasma stream was extracted using a divergent magnetic field and had ion energies of 10–30 eV. The oxidation of single-crystal Si substrates by the ECR-plasma stream provided a large SiO 2 growth rate at the initial growth stage (>6 nm/min) with a very small activation energy of 0.02 eV. SiO 2 film was sputter-deposited in the metal mode of reactive ECR sputtering on the SiO 2 film previously formed by oxidation. The MOS diodes with the single-layer and stacked SiO 2 films had high-quality SiO 2 /Si interfaces with interface-trap densities of 2×10 10 –3×10 10 cm -2 eV -1 , which were obtained by postdeposition annealing at 400°C in hydrogen-gas atmosphere. The SiO 2 films formed by oxidation and the stacked SiO 2 films provided breakdown fields greater than 11 MV/cm. The dependence of leakage current on measuring temperature was not observed for the stacked SiO 2 films, indicating that the dominant conduction was Fowler–Nordheim tunneling.