Compositional and mechanistic aspects of ultrathin oxynitride film growth on Si(100)

The oxynitridation of Si(100) by various sequences of NO, N2O and O2 exposures have been examined using high resolution medium energy ion scattering (MEIS) to determine accurate N and O concentrations and depth profiles. The results demonstrate that: 1) NO-produced oxynitride films have a higher concentration of N in them relative to N2O films, 2) N, once incorporated, significantly retards the rate of continued oxidation (or nitridation) in proportion to the N concentration, and 3) concurrent to nitridation near the interface, under certain conditions N2O exposure may remove N from a film in the overlayer beyond the near-interfacial (approximately 1.5 nm) region, whereas NO is much less effective at removing N.