Impact of temperature increments on tunneling barrier height and effective electron mass for plasma nitrided thin SiO2 layer on a large wafer area

Thermally grown SiO2 layers were treated by a plasma nitridation process realized in a vertical furnace. The combination of a pulsed-low frequency plasma and a microwave remote plasma with N2/NH3/He feed gas mixture was used to nitride the thermally grown SiO2 gate dielectrics of MIS structures. Temperature dependency of effective masses and the barrier heights for electrons in pure thermally grown SiO2 as well as plasma nitrided SiO2 in high electric field by means of Fowler–Nordheim regime was determined. It is frequently seen from the literature that either effective electron mass or barrier height (generally effective electron mass) is assumed to be a constant and, as a result, the second parameter is calculated under the chosen assumption. However, in contrast to general attitude of previous studies, this work does not make any such assumptions for the calculation of neither of these two important parameters of an oxide at temperature ranges from 23 to 110 °C for SiO2, and 23 to 130 °C for nitrided o...