Study on the effect of oxygen gas pressure on oxide thickness in wet oxidation process / Nur Athirah Md Ya'kob

Wafer manufacturing normally starts out with thermal oxidation, followed by a device isolation process. Thermal oxidation is the module that makes the so-called silicon planar process possible. During thermal oxidation, silicon is consumed from the wafer and incorporated into the growing oxide. The thickness of silicon consumed is 0.46 times the thickness of Si02 formed either for dry or wet oxidation. In this study, wet oxidation was used. The relation between oxygen pressure and thickness was determined which is the pressure varies from 9 SLM to 13 SLM. From the theory, it says when pressure increasing, it will affect the thickness of the wafer. Five wafers for each type of wafer orientation were used in this study to determine the result and proved the theory. In this project, the wafer was studied by using different pressure of oxygen but the oxidation temperature was fixed. The thickness of the wafer for both p-type and n-type was calculated and analyzed by using Filmetric. In other to determine the effect of the pressure on the thickness, it was determined based on the results from the calculation of thickness formed after the wet oxidation process completed. So, the oxygen pressure affected the wafer thickness. Also, the wafer color matching to the theory with the respective thickness.