Overview Deal-Grove model: linear-parabolic model for 1D oxide growth (along z-direction) from un-patterned wafer surface.

It is applicable to: Oxidation temperature 700-1200oC Gas pressure at wafer surface 0.1-25 atm. Oxide film thickness 20-2000nm. Considering dry oxygen molecules as the oxidant species, by radio active tracer, it has been shown that oxidation proceeds by inward movement of O2 molecules through SiO2 to the Si SiO2 interface where the reaction Si(solid) + O(gas) SiO2 takes place. This forms a contrast with the case of Copper whose oxidation proceeds by the outward motion of the metallic ion and also with the case of anodic oxidation of silicon, where silicon moves outward.

H2O is for wet oxidation O2 for dry oxidation D-G model: three flux at equilibrium D-G model: three flux at equilibrium

Wet oxidation: a mixture of O2 and H2O (O2 bubble through hot water) used as oxidant. Advantage: higher growth rate than dry oxidation. Reason for higher rate: much larger solubility in oxide (Henrys constant H) for H2O compared with O2. C*(bulk concentration, =HPG) for H2O: 3x1019/cm3; and for O2: 5x1016/cm3. Disadvantage: oxides grown wet are less dense, with a more open structure, because out-diffusion of H2 creates voids along its path. Thus wet oxidation is typically used when a thick oxide is required that will not be subjected to any significant electrical stress that may lead to electrical breakdown. Dry oxidation: slow, higher quality than wet oxidation, used for gate oxide. Note that dry oxidation appears to always have some initial oxide present (i.e. xi0). F1: flux of oxidizing species transported from the gas phase to the gas-oxide interface. F2: flux across the existing oxide toward the silicon substrate. F3: flux reacting at the SiO2 interface (this term is not strictly flux/flow). In steady state, the three fluxes are equal.

DealGrove model
The DealGrove model mathematically describes the growth of an oxide layer on the surface of a material. In particular, it is used to analyze thermal oxidation of silicon in semiconductor device fabrication. The model was first published in 1965 by Bruce Deal and Andrew Grove, of Fairchild Semiconductor.

Physical assumptions

The model assumes that oxidation reaction occurs at the interface between the oxide and the substrate, rather than between the oxide and the ambient gas. Thus, it considers three phenomena that the oxidizing species undergoes, in this order: 1. It diffuses from the bulk of the ambient gas to the surface. 2. It diffuses through the existing oxide layer to the oxide-substrate interface. 3. It reacts with the substrate. The model assumes that each of these stages proceeds at a rate proportional to the oxidant's concentration. In the first case, this means Henry's law; in the second, Fick's law of diffusion; in the third, a first-order reaction with respect to the oxidant. It also assumes steady state conditions, i.e. that transient effects do not appear.

Results
Given these assumptions, the flux of oxidant through each of the three phases can be expressed in terms of concentrations, material properties, and temperature.

By setting the three fluxes equal to each other, each may be found. In turn, the growth rate may be found readily from the oxidant reaction flux.

In practice, the ambient gas (stage 1) does not limit the reaction rate, so this part of the equation is often dropped. This simplification yields a simple quadratic equation for the oxide thickness. For oxide growing on an initially bare substrate, the thickness Xo at time t is given by the following equation:

where the constants A and B encapsulate the properties of the reaction and the oxide layer, respectively. These constants are given as:

where , with being the gas solubility parameter of the Henry's law and is the partial pressure of the diffusing gas. denotes the oxidant molecules/unit volume needed to produce a unit volume of the oxide. If a wafer that already contains oxide is placed in an oxidizing ambient, this equation must be modified by adding a corrective term , the time that would have been required to grow the preexisting oxide under current conditions. This term may be found using the equation for t above. Solving the quadratic equation for Xo yields:

Taking the short and long time limits of the above equation reveals two main modes of operation:

Because they appear in these equations, the quantities B and B/A are often called the quadratic and linear reaction rate constants. They depend exponentially on temperature, like this:

where is the activation energy and is the Boltzmann Constant in eV. differs from one equation to the other. The following table lists the values of the four parameters for single-crystal silicon under conditions typically used in industry (low doping, atmospheric pressure).