Origin of unusual rapid oxidation process for ultrathin oxidation (<2 nm) of silicon

Abstract

We propose a kinetic model to reveal the origin of unusual rapid oxidation behavior for the ultrathin (<2 nm) oxidation of silicon demonstrated by [Enta et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 012110 (2008)] by considering the space-charge drift of O ions and the intrinsic concentration gradient diffusion of residual O ions that dominate the initial rapid oxidation process following the slow oxidation state, respectively. Importantly, the present model well describes the whole experiment data with different temperatures and pressures and diffusion activation energies for two regimes attained by our model, which coincides with the reported experiment data and theory calculation.