Etching-enhanced surface stress relaxation during initial ozone oxidation

Initial oxidation via ozone on the Si(1 0 0) surface is investigated by measuring surface stress and observing atomic structure via a scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). A similar investigation is also carried out for molecular oxygen and the results are compared. As a result, monotonic increase of the surface stress to the compressive stress side is obtained up to 0.33 N/m for ozone oxidation at room temperature, while molecular oxygen shows only tiny surface stress growth. From the STM observations, it is found that the difference between ozone and molecular oxygen oxidation is the existence of surface etching. As the origin of the surface stress, therefore, the reduction of the intrinsic tensile surface stress due to the reconstructed surface by the etching process is proposed.