Nitridation effects on Pb center structures at SiO2/Si(100) interfaces

Interfacial defect structures of NO-nitride oxide on Si(100) were characterized by electron spin resonance spectroscopy. We confirmed that the effective g values of the P-b1 center are affected by interfacial nitridation even at a small nitrogen concentration of 5 at. %, while those of the P-b0 center proved to be unchanged. We observed that the shifted P-b1 line appeared gradually with interfacial nitrogen concentration, which suggests that the nitrogen-induced modified structure substitutes for the original P-b1 structure. Angular variations of the shifted P-b1 lines were also significantly different from those of pure oxide. Based on our analysis, we attributed the g value shift of the P-b1 center to dangling bond tilting, caused by the displacement of nearest-neighbor Si atoms. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.