Title :
Development of thermal neutron SER-resilient high-k/metal gate technology
Author :
Jongwoo Park ; Gunrae Kim ; Ming Zhang ; Kyungsik Park ; Miji Lee ; Ilgon Kim ; Jongsun Bae ; Sangwoo Pae ; Jinwoo Choi ; Dongsuk Shin ; Nae-In Lee ; Kee Sup Kim
Author_Institution :
Technol. Quality & Reliability, Samsung Electron., Yongin, South Korea
Abstract :
We report the experimental procedure and data that establishes the correlation between natural boron (B10) concentration and thermal neutron soft error rate (SER) in an advanced 28nm high-k/metal gate (HK/MG) technology node. Thermal neutron induced singe event upsets (SEU) depend on the concentration of B10 in the contact process adopted for boosting SRAM performance. However, as technology rapidly evolves in terms of transistor feature size and overall design complexity, B10 concentration needs to decrease so as to reduce thermal neutron SER risk. Optimization of contact and eSiGe process can provide a technology profile that is robust against thermal and high energy neutron SER.
Keywords :
Ge-Si alloys; SRAM chips; boron; high-k dielectric thin films; neutron effects; radiation hardening (electronics); semiconductor materials; thermal analysis; B; HK-MG technology node; SEU; SRAM performance boosting; SiGe; contact optimization; contact process; design complexity; natural boron concentration; size 28 nm; technology profile; thermal neutron SER risk reduction; thermal neutron SER-resilient high-k-metal gate technology; thermal neutron induced singe event upsets; thermal neutron soft error rate; transistor feature size; Error analysis; Logic gates; Neutrons; Process control; Random access memory; Rapid thermal processing; Silicon; W-contact; diborane; embedded SiGe; resistance; soft error rate; thermal neutron;
Conference_Titel :
Reliability Physics Symposium, 2014 IEEE International
Conference_Location :
Waikoloa, HI
DOI :
10.1109/IRPS.2014.6860587
