Impact of Nitrogen on PBTI Characteristics of HfSiON/TiN Gate Stacks

Author

Krishnan, Siddarth A. ; Quevedo-Lopez, Manuel ; Li, Hong-Jyh ; Kirsch, Paul ; Choi, Rino ; Young, Chadwin ; Peterson, Jeff J. ; Lee, Byoung Hun ; Bersuker, Gennadi ; Lee, Jack C.

Author_Institution

Microelectron. Res. Center, Texas Univ., Austin, TX

fYear

2006

fDate

26-30 March 2006

Firstpage

325

Lastpage

328

Abstract

The impact of nitrogen on charge trapping induced positive bias temperature instability (PBTI) characteristics in HfSiON/TiN gate stacks is investigated. While thickness is found to be the primary parameter to reduce charge trapping, plasma nitrogen reduces PBTI effects in thick (2.7 nm) HfSiON films. Thin films (1.8 nm) show significantly lower threshold voltage (V_TH) shift than thick films and seem to be insensitive to N content. Thermal nitridation exacerbates the PBTI effects more than plasma nitridation

Keywords

electron traps; hafnium compounds; high-k dielectric thin films; nitridation; nitrogen; reliability; thick films; titanium compounds; 1.8 nm; 2.7 nm; HfSiON-TiN; charge trapping; plasma nitridation; positive bias temperature instability; thermal nitridation; thick films; thin films; Annealing; Dielectrics; Electron traps; Nitrogen; Plasma applications; Plasma materials processing; Plasma measurements; Plasma temperature; Plasma x-ray sources; Tin;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Reliability Physics Symposium Proceedings, 2006. 44th Annual., IEEE International

Conference_Location

San Jose, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9498-4

Electronic_ISBN

0-7803-9499-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RELPHY.2006.251237

Filename

4017177