Nitrogen profile control by plasma nitridation technique for poly-Si gate HfSiON CMOSFET with excellent interface property and ultra-low leakage current

A comparative study of plasma and thermal nitridation of HfSiO was performed systematically. We found that over 15 atom% of nitrogen is necessary to obtain sufficient thermal stability and blocking of boron diffusion in a conventional polycrystalline Si gate CMOS process regardless of the nitridation method. However, we demonstrated, for the first time, that plasma nitridation has a great advantage for obtaining thinner equivalent oxide thickness, lower gate leakage current (J/sub g//J/sub g/SiO/sub 2/=1E-4 @ V/sub g/=V/sub fb/-1 V) and higher carrier mobility (/spl mu//sub eff///spl mu//sub eff/SiO/sub 2/=0.85 @ E/sub eff/=0.8 MV/cm for electron, /spl mu//sub eff///spl mu//sub eff/SiO/sub 2/=0.9 @ E/sub eff/=0.5 MV/cm for hole) due to nitridation of HfSiO film without nitridation of Si substrate, compared with thermal nitridation.