Semiconductor wafer fabrication process including gettering utilizing a combined oxidation technique

摘要

An improved method of silicon wafer fabrication suitable for either CMOS and/or NMOS process flows. The present method utilizes few processing steps to reduce fabrication costs and enhance wafer throughput. The improved method combines sacrificial oxide growth and removal steps of CMOS and NMOS front end pre-oxide steps with existing pad oxide growth and removal steps, resulting in fewer required operations. The thermal cycles required to form gettering sites within Cz bulk silicon wafers are retained, thus allowing the number of required processing operations to be reduced without negatively impacting existing levels of expected production yields.