A new growth model of thin silicon oxide in dry oxygen

This paper presents a new growth kinetic model for thermal oxidation of silicon in dry oxygen, taking into account the effect of charged oxygen on the growth rate. Two parallel oxidizing species are assumed to be transported during oxidation, i.e., neutral ones via interstitial sites and charged ones through the network. The kinetic model has sufficient physical justifications and agrees with a recent dry oxidation study using ¹⁸O/ ¹⁶O sequential treatment. The model is found to correlate very well with experimental data at an O₂ pressure of 1 atm in the temperature range 850-1000°C in dry oxygen for both 〈100〉 and 〈111〉 silicon. Special emphasis is placed on the thin initial regime (10-300 Å) where this model is in excellent agreement with the experiments. The maximum error does not exceed 0.2 Å/min in the curve fitting.