Evaluation of different oxidation methods for silicon for scanning capacitance microscopy

Different oxides, namely, native, thermal, and wet-chemical (H2SO4 + H2O2 based) oxides on Si are evaluated in the context of scanning capacitance microscopy (SCM). The samples investigated consisted of uniformly doped Si substrates and p-type epitaxial doping-staircase structures with concentrations ranging from 5 x 10(14) to 2 x 10(19) cm(-3) The bias for which the SCM signal (dC/dV) is maximised for the lowest doped region was used for comparing the different oxidation methods. It is shown that for a better evaluation of the surface oxide properties, it is essential to obtain dC/dV curves for a sufficiently large doping range. Best results in terms of low values of flat-band voltages (1 V), uniformity, and consistency across a large doping range were obtained for the wet-chemical oxide. For the native oxide case, the difference in the dC/dV peak bias Values obtained at regions doped to 5 x 10(14) to 10(17) cm(-3) was anomalously large and suggests appreciable distortion of the dC/dV curves. For the same oxidation procedure the full-width at half-maximum of the dC/dV curve obtained on the cleaved surface is typically 2 times larger than that on the planar (100) surface. It is most likely that interface states are responsible for the observed distortion. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.