Title: Ellipsometric Study of the Plasma Oxidation of Tantalum
Abstract:We have shown that it is possible to grow a uniform Ta oxide film up to a thickness of 1500Å by plasma oxidation. The average speed of growth was 0.1 Å/sec, which is comparable to earlier studies. Our...We have shown that it is possible to grow a uniform Ta oxide film up to a thickness of 1500Å by plasma oxidation. The average speed of growth was 0.1 Å/sec, which is comparable to earlier studies. Our experiments show that there is no significant contamination of the oxide due to sputtering from the cathode and that there is no evidence of sputter etching of the sample oxide due to the sample facing the cathode. These results are in opposition to the reports of earlier investigators. We find that our ellipsometric measurements on the oxide growth indicate that the Ta oxide being formed is a single, uniform layer with an index of refraction of 2.21. This result is in contrast to the earlier work of Lee et al., who fitted their ellipsometric measurements on plasma‐grown Ta oxide with a two‐layer model with layer indices of 1.89 and 2.22.Read More