Nitrogen-doped nickel monosilicide technique for deep submicron CMOS salicide

A nitrogen-doped NiSi technique has been developed for deep submicron CMOS. It was found that the nitrogen suppresses oxidation of the silicide film, resulting in significantly reduced roughness at the interface between silicide and the Si substrate. It was confirmed that, as a consequence, the leakage current through the silicided ultra-shallow diffused layer was significantly suppressed. The nitrogen-doped NiSi film has the advantage of containing large single crystal grains, and this reduces the resistivity of the film. The nitrogen-doped NiSi technique was used to fabricate 0.15 μm CMOS devices, and these devices, both n- and p-MOSFETs, exhibited very high Id and gm values without leakage current