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US 6,274,429 B1Granted
Use of Si-rich oxide film as a chemical potential barrier for controlled oxidation
AssigneeTexas Instruments Incorporated
InventorSudhanshu Misra
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Abstract
An oxidation process for reducing the data retention loss (DRL) in a FAMOS device comprising the steps of (1) low temperature deposition of a silicon-enriched silicon oxide (130) over a FAMOS transistor gate stack (116) and (2) annealing said silicon-enriched oxide (130) at a high temperature in oxygen atmosphere to convert said silicon-enriched oxide (130) to a thermal oxide. The silicon enriched oxide (130) acts as both an oxygen getter and diffusion barrier during the annealing step.
Claims16
An oxidation process, comprising the steps of:
- depositing at a low temperature a silicon-enriched silicon oxide on a surface and sidewalls of a gate stack;
- and
- reoxidizing said silicon enriched oxide on the surface and sidewalls of the gate stack.
A method of fabricating a non-volatile memory, comprising the steps of:
- forming a gate stack on a substrate, said gate stack comprising a first polysilicon layer, a gate dielectric layer, a second polysilicon layer and a metallic suicide layer;
- depositing at a low temperature a silicon-enriched oxide layer over said gate stack including adjacent sidewalls of said gate stack;
- annealing said silicon-enriched oxide layer in an oxygen ambient at a temperature sufficient for thermal oxidation to occur including a portion of said silicon-enriched oxide adjacent sidewalls of the gate stack;
- implanting source and drain regions.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.