Regular relief on a silicon surface as a structural defect getter

An investigation was made to determine how a regular relief on the silicon surface influences gettering in silicon-silicon-dioxide structures. The reg ular relief was created by a photolithographic technique before oxidation a nd comprised an orthogonal network of overlapping bands. The gettering was determined from the isothermal relaxation of the capacitance of a silicon-s ilicon-dioxide structure after switching from strong inversion to even stro nger inversion. It is shown that a regular relief at the silicon-silicon-di oxide interface is an effective getter at a depth of several hundred micron . (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S1063-7850(99)01301- 4].