Silicon Oxidation in Inductively-Coupled N2O Plasma and its Effect on Polycrystalline-Silicon Thin Film Transistors

Abstract

Inductively-coupled O plasma was utilized to grow silicon dioxide at low temperature and applied to fabricate polycrystalline-silicon thin film transistors. At , the thickness of oxide was limited to 5nm and the oxide contained Si≡N and ≡Si-N-Si≡ bonds. The nitrogen incorporation improved breakdown field to 10MV/cm and reduced the interface charge density to $1.5210^{11}$ with negative charge. The O plasma gate oxide enhanced the field effect mobility of polycrystalline thin film transistor, compared to plasma gate oxide, due to the reduced interface charge at the interface and also due to the reduced trap density at Si grain boundaries by nitrogen passivation.