The surface oxidation of silicon (Si) wafers by atomic oxygen radical
anions (O
- anions) and the preparation of
metal--oxide--semiconductor (MOS) capacitors on the O
--oxidized Si substrates have been examined for the first time. The
O
- anions are generated from a recently developed O
-
storage-emission material of [Ca
24Al
28O
64]
4+.4O
- (C12A7-O
- for short). After it has been
irradiated by an O
- anion beam (0.5\mu A/cm
2) at
300
0C for 1--10 hours, the Si wafer achieves an oxide layer
with a thickness ranging from 8 to 32nm. X-ray photoelectron
spectroscopy (XPS) results reveal that the oxide layer is of a
mixture of SiO
2, Si
2O
3, and Si
2O distributed in
different oxidation depths. The features of the MOS capacitor of
x/Si> are investigated by measuring
capacitance-voltage (C-V) and current-voltage (I-V) curves. The
oxide charge density is about 6.0 \times 1011cm2
derived from the C-V curves. The leakage current density is in the
order of 10-6A/cm2 below 4MV/cm, obtained from the
$I-V$ curves. The O- anions formed by present method would
have potential applications to the oxidation and the
surface-modification of materials together with the preparation of
semiconductor devices.