Abstract
As well demonstrated in the Deal-Grove general model for thermal oxidation kinetics of silicon, a deviation from experiments on short-time oxidation regime is existed. Further study on the interface configuration and growth kinetics of oxidation process of silicon is performed. Various isotopic labeling experiments allow us to argue that this region of an "anomalously high" rate near Si-SiO
2
interface represents a transition region between Si and fully oxidized SiO
2
layer, which may be viewed as an incompletely oxidized layer. We accordingly present a phenomenological improved Deal-Grove model. The calculated results fit much better than the Deal-Grove model prediction with the measured oxidation thickness for both dry- and wet-oxidation experiments.