Oxide/nitride stacked gate dielectric and associated methods

Abstract

A method for making an oxide/nitride stacked layer makes the nitride layer defective so that it is semi-transparent or permeable to oxygen. The method includes first forming an oxide layer on a semiconductor substrate. The defective nitride layer is formed on the oxide layer using direct plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The defective nitride layer is formed while exposing the plasma with a low energy magnetic field for providing a uniform energy distribution across a surface of the oxide layer. A resulting distribution of thicknesses of the defective nitride layer has a standard deviation less than about 1.5% across a wafer. The defective nitride layer is permeable to oxygen so that when the semiconductor substrate is annealed, the interface trap sites are significantly reduced or eliminated.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.