THE INFLUENCE OF CYCLIC TREATMENTS WITH H2O2 AND HF SOLUTIONS ON THE ROUGHNESS OF SILICON SURFACE

The influence of cyclic treatments with H2O2/DIW (1:10) and HF/DIW (1: 100) on the roughness of silicon surface in the wet chemical processin g was investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM). During the step o f the SC-1 cleaning, there is a large increase in roughness on the sil icon surface which will result in the poor gate oxide breakdown proper ties. The roughness of the silicon wafer after the SC-1 cleaning step was reduced by cyclic treatments of hydrogen peroxide solution and hyd rofluoric acid solution instead of HF-only cleaning. AFM images after each step clearly illustrated that the average roughness of silicon su rface after three times treatments with H2O2 and HF solutions was redu ced by 10 times compared with that after the SC-1 cleaning step.