摘要
In this experiment the ultrahigh vacuum environment of a molecular‐beam epitaxy reactor equipped with ammonia was used to thermally nitride silicon. The resulting thin silicon nitride films were incorporated as gate insulators of metal‐insulator‐semiconductor field‐effect transistors. The fabrication of field‐effect transistors enabled very accurate interface state characterization of the silicon–silicon nitride interface by the charge pumping technique. The ammonia nitridation of silicon was also investigated as a surface passivation technique for scanning probe microscope (both conductive tip atomic force microscope and scanning tunneling microscope) lithography techniques.