The microelectronic industry is still ruled up to now by the law of miniaturization or scaling. In particular, in CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) technology, the oxide allowing electric isolation between p- and n-MOS transistors has also been scaled down and has then exhibited different technological processes going from LOCOS (local oxidation of silicon) to STI (shallow trench isolation) and arriving to FIPOS (full isolation by porous oxidation of silicon). The latter seems to be the most promising alternative solution that can overcome actual limitations of voiding and dishing encountered in the STI process. The approach, which is based on selective formation of porous silicon and its easy transformation to silicon dioxide, has aroused our motivation to be well studied. In this context, the PhD project has first focused on the understanding of electrochemical porous silicon formation, and then on the study of porous silicon oxidation. In a first part of our work, we emphasize the dependence of porous silicon formation with the silicon doping concentration through the investigation of current-voltage I-V characteristics measured on p- and n-type silicon electrodes during electrochemical anodization. Taking advantage of this dependence, we have developed a very simple electrochemical method allowing an accurate determination of doping profiles in p-type silicon. It has been shown that the depth resolution of the technique is readily linked to the doping level and it approaches that of the secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis for high doping concentrations with an estimated value of 60 nm/decade. In a second step, we highlight the selective formation of oxidized porous silicon. In fact, with a correct choice of the applied potential during anodization, only highly doped regions implanted on a lightly doped silicon wafer are preferentially turned into porous silicon and subsequently oxidized. Furthermore, we give the optimum conditions for oxidation and anodization processes which result in an insulating oxide of reliable dielectric properties.
