Nuclear Reaction Analysis of Electronic Materials - Part I: Metal-oxide-semiconductor Structures

Use of the resonant nuclear reaction of 1H (15N, a, y) 12C at 6.4 MeV is applied to the analysis of hydrogen in materials used in the fabrication of microelectronic devices. Specifically, thin thermally grown silicon dioxide and glow discharge deposited amorphous silicon, have been chosen due to the critical role of hydrogen in determining the electrical behavior of devices incorporating these films. The characterization technique is capable of absolute hydrogern concentration determination to ~ 10 ppma as well as depth profiles with better than 10 nm resolution. A brief review of the measurement system is presented followed by some results for the aluminum-oxide-silicon system, including the first measurements of the accumulation of hydrogen at the silicon-silicon dioxide interface.