
392 Crystal Growth and Evaluation of Silicon for VLSI and ULSI
11.3 Storage of Wafers and Control of Particulate
Contamination with Process-Bound Wafers
A systematic study by Raider et al. [28] using electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis
(ESCA) and ellipsometry methods on the oxide growth on silicon provided interesting
results. According to them, on any fresh silicon surface, impurities rapidly adsorb on any
moderately doped silicon substrates. This is particularly after the chemical etching step is
carried out to remove the existing silicon dioxide layer from the surface using HF-based
solutions. The initial oxide growth rates on the ...