Very flat silicon wafers with nanometer scale roughness are important during semiconductor device patterning onto the wafer. Recent reports have shown that thermal processing at high temperature in H 2 or H 2 -Ar mixtures may be used to reduce roughness of silicon wafers at short length scales such as 1-10μm. This paper reports the impact upon roughness of high temperature heat treatment in a diffusion furnace in mixtures of hydrogen and argon. Experiments show surface roughness is reduced

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... g high temperature processing and is independent of argon or argonhydrogen processing environment for length scales in the range of 0.1-100μm.