High-Pressure Oxidation on Ge: Improvement of Ge/GeO2 Interface and GeO2 Bulk Properties

On the basis of thermodynamic and kinetic consideration of Ge-O system, high-pressure oxidation (HPO) on Ge was proposed to suppress the GeO desorption during the thermal oxidation and significant improvements of Ge/GeO2-based gate stacks have been achieved. It is found that the post oxidation annealing at lower temperatures is helpful to passivate the interface defects at the Ge/GeO2 stack generated by the conventional thermal oxidation, while the high-quality GeO2 bulk properties can only be achieved by HPO that grows GeO2 film at high temperatures without the GeO desorption. This paper reviews the advantage of HPO on the formation of Ge/GeO2 stacks in terms of Ge/GeO2 interface and GeO2 bulk properties.