A review of the plasma oxidation of silicon and its applications
In recent years there has been an increasing trend towards 'dry' and 'cold' processing. The oxidation of silicon in an oxygen plasma allows the controlled growth of thin, high-quality films of silicon dioxide at temperatures down to room temperature in a clean vacuum environment. In this review the various experimental systems which have been reported in the literature over the last twenty-eight years are compared and contrasted. Physical properties of the oxides are found to be very similar to thermally grown films. The reported kinetics of plasma oxide growth are reviewed, together with the electrical and electronic properties of the grown oxide layers. Inductively coupled plasma oxidation is shown to have advantages over the other techniques, and some recent results obtained using this method are highlighted. The current and possible future applications of plasma oxidation for novel silicon and silicon-based device processing are discussed.