Patent ID: 7344948

Claim:
A method of forming a transistor, comprising: forming a gate oxide layer over a semiconductive substrate, the gate oxide layer comprising silicon dioxide; the gate oxide layer having an upper surface and a lower surface; exposing the gate oxide layer to activated nitrogen species from a nitrogen-containing plasma to introduce nitrogen into the gate oxide layer and form a nitrogen-enriched region, the nitrogen enriched region being only in an upper half of the gate oxide layer, the gate oxide layer being maintained at a temperature of less than 400° during the exposing; after the exposing,thermally annealing the nitrogen within the nitrogen-enriched region to bond at least a majority of the nitrogen to silicon proximate the nitrogen; the nitrogen-enriched region remaining confined to the upper half of the silicon-oxide-containing layer during the annealing; forming at least one conductive layer over the gate oxide layer; and forming source/drain regions within the semiconductive substrate; the source/drain regions being gatedly connected to one another by the conductive layer.