Influence of the oxidation temperature on the fabrication process of silicon dioxide aperture tips

The thermal oxidation of structured silicon surfaces was successfully used to reproducibly define apertures of approximately 100 nm in silicon dioxide tips at reduced oxidation temperatures. In this paper we theoretically investigate the oxidation process in more detail, describing the rheological behavior of silicon dioxide as a Maxwell fluid with non-linear viscosity. For this purpose numerical calculations of the oxidation process of trench-like silicon structures were performed. Contrary to former assumptions, our theoretical results indicate that oxide-growth retardation is more effective at raised oxidation temperatures. This is experimentally confirmed in the case of trench structures. The more pronounced oxide retardation at elevated temperatures is exploited to obtain apertures in silicon dioxide tips of 60 nm for oxidation temperatures of 1100 °C. Received: 8 April 2002 / Accepted: 11 April 2002 / Published online: 4 November 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author. Fax: +49-561/804-4136, E-mail: oester@physik.uni-kassel.de