The formation of a nanometer-size oxide pattern on silicon using a scanning probe microscope (SPM) has been widely reported in the literature. No analytical model has been proposed, however, to explain the variation of the oxide height with both polarization and speed of the SPM tip. In this letter, we explain quantitatively the variation of the oxide height with the polarization and the speed of the tip with a model based on field induced oxidation. Data analysis also allows us to estimate the thermal activation energy of the oxidation process,(∼0.15 eV).This low value is compared with activation energies measured for thermal and plasma oxidation of silicon. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.