Performance and hot-carrier reliability of N- and P-MOSFETs with rapid thermally NO-nitrided SiO/sub 2/ gate dielectrics

This paper reports on the performance and hot-carrier reliability of N- and P-channel MOSFET´s with oxynitride gate dielectrics fabricated by rapid thermal nitridation of thermally grown SiO/sub 2/ in pure nitric oxide (NO) ambient. NO nitridation results in an increase in the nitrogen (N) incorporation in the dielectric without a significant increase in oxide thickness. High field electron mobility is found to increase with NO-nitridation while hole mobility is only slightly degraded. Hot-carrier reliability of both N- and P-channel MOSFETs is found to be significantly enhanced with increasing NO-nitridation. A 1000/spl deg/C, 10-second NO-anneal is found to be the optimum nitridation condition since, compared to control oxide devices, these devices showed comparable electron and hole mobility but significantly enhanced hot-carrier immunity.<>