Thermal growth of silicon oxynitride films on Si: A reaction-diffusion approach

Abstract

We present some experimental results and propose a reaction-diffusion model to describe thermal growth of silicon oxynitride films on Si in NO and N2O, as well as annealing in NO of thermally grown silicon oxide films on Si. We obtain growth kinetics and N and O depth distributions for the different growth routes by changing only initial and boundary conditions of a set of nonlinear differential equations. The results suggest that the puzzling differences in film growth rate and N incorporation originate from dynamical effects, rather than in differences in chemical reactions.