Performance enhancement in aggressively scaled CMOS devices higher carrier activation with laser spike annealing

We have investigated in depth the impact of higher carrier activation by laser spike annealing (LSA), and demonstrate that LSA can improve the ion current while suppressing short channel effect in sub-40-nm CMOS devices compared to the conventional spike RTA. A shallower junction depth and shorter SDE overlap length can be achieved for the same SDE sheet resistance by using LSA, and as a result, Vth-rolloff can be improved dramatically. Moreover, the higher carrier activation of LSA produced improvements in ion current of 3%/14% for PMOS/NMOS. We also demonstrate that a 13% improvement in ion can be achieved for PMOS at the same Vth-rolloff.