We have studied the effects of initial wafer bow and warpage on the in
tegrity of thinner gate oxides grown by both furnace and rapid thermal
processing (RTP) methods. There is evidence of a correlation between
wafer warpage and bow to the charge-to-breakdown characteristics of th
e gate oxide. An almost linear increase in defect density was observed
when plotted as a function of increasing wafer warpage. The lifetime
(t50%) of the samples with initial warpage of 10 mum or less is report
ed higher than those with initial warpage of more than 60 mum for both
furnace and RTP-grown oxides. The value of bow for the warped samples
was taken for cases with the highest positive and negative values so
both kinds of shape trends could be investigated. With initial wafer w
arpage ranging from 4 to 70 mum, we present the results of wafer dimen
sional analysis and correlate these to defect density and lifetime stu
dies for thin gate oxides.