Review of Silicon Nanowire Oxidation

Abstract

Silicon nanowires (SNWs) have recently attracted a lot of interest due to its explosive potential for nanoelectronic applications. To materialize these applications, the key role of thermal oxidation behavior of SNWs must be thoroughly understood. In the first half of the paper we review the results on SNW oxidation published up to date. It is commonly observed that SNW oxidation shows a retarded oxidation rate and stronger temperature dependence compared to those of planar Si; in addition, the SNW oxide thickness is also a strong function of SNW diameter. In the second half, we report our results on the SNW oxidation using an in-situ steam generation (ISSG) approach. ISSG oxidation is applied to oxidize the SNWs generated by a top-down lithography-etch approach, as an important technique to reduce the SNW diameter below 10nm. It is found that SNW oxidation with ISSG also exhibits a retared oxidation compared to that of planar Si using the same ISSG process, and a less dependance on SNW sizes than furnace SNW oxidation.