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Surface passivation

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Surface passivation, also known as Atalla passivation,[1] refers to a common semiconductor device fabrication process critical to modern electronics. It is the process by which a semiconductor surface is rendered inert, and does not change semiconductor properties as a result of interaction with air or other materials in contact with the surface or edge of the crystal. This is typically achieved using a form of thermal oxidation.[2] In a silicon semiconductor, this process allows electricity to reliably penetrate to the conducting silicon below the surface, and to overcome the surface states that prevent electricity from reaching the semiconducting layer.[3][4] Surface passivation by thermal oxidation is one of the key features of silicon technology, and is dominant in microelectronics.[2] The surface passivation process was developed by Mohamed M. Atalla at Bell Labs in the late 1950s.[3] It is commonly used to manufacture MOSFETs (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors) and silicon integrated circuit chips (with the planar process), and is critical to the semiconductor industry.[3][4] Surface passivation is also critical to solar cell and carbon quantum dot technologies.

History[]

Origins[]

Further information: Thermal oxidation
Atalla1963

Mohamed M. Atalla developed the process of surface passivation by thermal oxidation in 1957

The surface passivation process, also known as the Atalla passivation technique,[1] was developed by Mohamed M. Atalla at Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) in the late 1950s.[5][6] In 1955, Carl Frosch and Lincoln Derick at Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) accidentally discovered that silicon dioxide (SiO2) could be grown on silicon.[7] In the late 1950s, Atalla further discovered that the formation of a thermally grown SiO2 layer greatly reduced the concentration of electronic states at the silicon surface,[6] and discovered the important quality of SiO2 films to preserve the electrical characteristics of p–n junctions and prevent these electrical characteristics from deteriorating by the gaseous ambient environment.[8] He found that silicon oxide layers could be used to electrically stabilize silicon surfaces.[9] He developed the surface passivation process, a new method of semiconductor device fabrication that involves coating a silicon wafer with an insulating layer of silicon oxide so that electricity could reliably penetrate to the conducting silicon below. By growing a layer of silicon dioxide on top of a silicon wafer, Atalla was able to overcome the surface states that prevented electricity from reaching the semiconducting layer.[5][10] For the surface passivation process, he developed the method of thermal oxidation, which was a breakthrough in silicon semiconductor technology.[11]

Before the development of integrated circuit chips, discrete diodes and transistors exhibited relatively high reverse-bias junction leakages and low breakdown voltage, caused by the large density of traps at the surface of single crystal silicon. Atalla's surface passivation process became the solution to this problem. He discovered that when a thin layer of silicon dioxide was grown on the surface of silicon where a p–n junction intercepts the surface, the leakage current of the junction was reduced by a factor from 10 to 100. This showed that the oxide reduces and stabilizes many of the interface and oxide traps. Oxide-passivation of silicon surfaces allowed diodes and transistors to be fabricated with significantly improved device characteristics, while the leakage path along the surface of the silicon was also effectively shut off. This became one of the fundamental isolation capabilities necessary for planar technology and integrated circuit chips.[12]

Atalla first published his findings in BTL memos during 1957, before presenting his work at an Electrochemical Society meeting in 1958.[13][14] The same year, he made further refinements to the process with his colleagues E. Tannenbaum and E.J. Scheibner, before they published their results in May 1959.[15][16] According to Fairchild Semiconductor engineer Chih-Tang Sah, the surface passivation process developed by Atalla's team "blazed the trail" that led to the development of the silicon integrated circuit.[12][15] Atalla's surface passivation method was the basis for several important inventions in 1959: the MOSFET (MOS transistor) by Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs, the planar process by Jean Hoerni at Fairchild Semiconductor, and the monolithic integrated circuit chip by Robert Noyce at Fairchild in 1959.[13][14][12][15] By the mid-1960s, Atalla's process for oxidized silicon surfaces was used to fabricate virtually all integrated circuits and silicon devices.[17]

Advances[]

Further information: Deal–Grove model and Massoud model
HishamZMassoud

Hisham Z. Massoud introduced the Massoud model of thermal oxidation in 1985

The Deal–Grove model is used to predict and interpret thermal oxidation of silicon in semiconductor device fabrication. The model was published in 1965 by Bruce Deal and Andrew Grove of Fairchild Semiconductor,[18] building on Mohamed M. Atalla's work on silicon surface passivation by thermal oxidation at Bell Labs in the late 1950s.[19]

In the 1980s, it became necessary to update the Deal-Grove model in order to model thin oxides. An approach that more accurately models thin oxides is the Massoud model, developed by Hisham Z. Massoud in 1985. The Massoud model is analytical and based on parallel oxidation mechanisms. It changes the parameters of the Deal-Grove model to better model the initial oxide growth with the addition of rate-enhancement terms.[20] The Massoud model is the most suitable for thin oxide films.[21] It isthe most widely used thermal oxidation model in nanoelectronics and nanotechnology.

In solar cell technology, surface passivation is critical to solar cell efficiency.[22] In carbon quantum dot (CQD) technology, CQDs are small carbon nanoparticles (less than 10 nm in size) with some form of surface passivation.[23][24][25] The process of surface passivation by acid oxidation was one of the earliest processes used to introduce chemical functionality to the surface of carbon quantum dots.[26]

References[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Maloberti, Franco; Davies, Anthony C. (2016). A Short History of Circuits and Systems: From Green, Mobile, Pervasive Networking to Big Data Computing (PDF). IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. p. 66. ISBN 9788793609860.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Surface Passivation - an overview". ScienceDirect. Retrieved 19 August 2019.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Martin (John) M. Atalla". National Inventors Hall of Fame. 2009. Retrieved 21 June 2013.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Dawon Kahng". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Martin (John) M. Atalla". National Inventors Hall of Fame. 2009. Retrieved 21 June 2013.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Black, Lachlan E. (2016). New Perspectives on Surface Passivation: Understanding the Si-Al2O3 Interface. Springer. p. 17. ISBN 9783319325217.
  7. ↑ Bassett, Ross Knox (2007). To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-up Companies, and the Rise of MOS Technology. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 22–23. ISBN 9780801886393.
  8. ↑ Saxena, A (2009). Invention of integrated circuits: untold important facts. International series on advances in solid state electronics and technology. World Scientific. p. 96. ISBN 9789812814456.
  9. ↑ Lécuyer, Christophe; Brock, David C. (2010). Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild Semiconductor. MIT Press. p. 111. ISBN 9780262294324.
  10. ↑ "Dawon Kahng". National Inventors Hall of Fame. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
  11. ↑ Huff, Howard (2005). High Dielectric Constant Materials: VLSI MOSFET Applications. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 34. ISBN 9783540210818.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Wolf, Stanley (March 1992). "A review of IC isolation technologies". Solid State Technology: 63.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Lojek, Bo (2007). History of Semiconductor Engineering. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 120& 321–323. ISBN 9783540342588.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Bassett, Ross Knox (2007). To the Digital Age: Research Labs, Start-up Companies, and the Rise of MOS Technology. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 46. ISBN 9780801886393.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Sah, Chih-Tang (October 1988). "Evolution of the MOS transistor-from conception to VLSI" (PDF). Proceedings of the IEEE. 76 (10): 1280–1326 (1290). Bibcode:1988IEEEP..76.1280S. doi:10.1109/5.16328. ISSN 0018-9219. Those of us active in silicon material and device research during 1956–1960 considered this successful effort by the Bell Labs group led by Atalla to stabilize the silicon surface the most important and significant technology advance, which blazed the trail that led to silicon integrated circuit technology developments in the second phase and volume production in the third phase.
  16. ↑ Atalla, M.; Tannenbaum, E.; Scheibner, E. J. (1959). "Stabilization of silicon surfaces by thermally grown oxides". The Bell System Technical Journal. 38 (3): 749–783. doi:10.1002/j.1538-7305.1959.tb03907.x. ISSN 0005-8580.
  17. ↑ Donovan, R. P. (November 1966). "The Oxide-Silicon Interface". Fifth Annual Symposium on the Physics of Failure in Electronics: 199–231. doi:10.1109/IRPS.1966.362364.
  18. ↑ Deal, B. E.; A. S. Grove (December 1965). "General Relationship for the Thermal Oxidation of Silicon". Journal of Applied Physics. 36 (12): 3770–3778. Bibcode:1965JAP....36.3770D. doi:10.1063/1.1713945.
  19. ↑ Yablonovitch, E. (20 October 1989). "The Chemistry of Solid-State Electronics" (PDF). Science. 246 (4928): 347–351. Bibcode:1989Sci...246..347Y. doi:10.1126/science.246.4928.347. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17747917. S2CID 17572922. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Atalla et al. began work on the thermal oxidation of Si. The oxidation recipe was gradually perfected by Deal, Grove, and many others.
  20. ↑ Massoud, Hisham Z.; J.D. Plummer (1985). "Thermal oxidation of silicon in dry oxygen: Accurate determination of the kinetic rate constants". Journal of the Electrochemical Society. 132 (11): 2693–2700. doi:10.1149/1.2113649.
  21. ↑ "2.7 The Massoud Model". www.iue.tuwien.ac.at. Retrieved 2024-08-23.
  22. ↑ Black, Lachlan E. (2016). New Perspectives on Surface Passivation: Understanding the Si-Al2O3 Interface (PDF). Springer. ISBN 9783319325217.
  23. ↑ Wang, Youfu; Hu, Aiguo (2014). "Carbon quantum dots: Synthesis, properties and applications". Journal of Materials Chemistry C. 2 (34): 6921–39. doi:10.1039/C4TC00988F.
  24. ↑ Fernando, K. A. Shiral; Sahu, Sushant; Liu, Yamin; Lewis, William K.; Guliants, Elena A.; Jafariyan, Amirhossein; Wang, Ping; Bunker, Christopher E.; Sun, Ya-Ping (2015). "Carbon Quantum Dots and Applications in Photocatalytic Energy Conversion". ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. 7 (16): 8363–76. doi:10.1021/acsami.5b00448. PMID 25845394.
  25. ↑ Gao, Xiaohu; Cui, Yuanyuan; Levenson, Richard M; Chung, Leland W K; Nie, Shuming (2004). "In vivo cancer targeting and imaging with semiconductor quantum dots". Nature Biotechnology. 22 (8): 969–76. doi:10.1038/nbt994. PMID 15258594.
  26. ↑ "Surface Passivation - an overview". ScienceDirect. Retrieved 19 August 2019.
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