A Study of Strain Engineering Using CESL Stressor on Reliability Comparing Effect of Intrinsic Mechanical Stress

Author

Lee, Kyong Taek ; Kang, Chang Yong ; Park, Min-Sang ; Lee, Byoung Hun ; Park, Ho Kyung ; Hwang, Hyun Sang ; Tseng, Hsing-Huang ; Jammy, Raj ; Jeong, Yoon-Ha

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Electr. Eng., Pohang Univ. of Sci. & Technol., Pohang

Volume

30

Issue

7

fYear

2009

fDate

7/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

760

Lastpage

762

Abstract

The effects of a stressor nitride layer on device performance and reliability are investigated. To decouple intrinsic mechanical stress and process-related effects, device characteristics under mechanical-bending stress and stressor layers were compared. The compressive-stressor device exhibits improved initial interface quality, although slightly degraded reliability characteristics, due to an increased hydrogen passivation of the dielectric/substrate interface. Thereby, the hydrogen passivation in the interface is found to be the primary cause of the difference in reliability characteristics.

Keywords

MOSFET; hafnium compounds; high-k dielectric thin films; internal stresses; passivation; semiconductor device reliability; HfON; MOSFETs; compressive-stressor device; dielectric-substrate interface; hydrogen passivation; interface quality; intrinsic mechanical stress; mechanical-bending stress; reliability; strain engineering; stressor nitride layer; Contact etch stop layer (CESL); mechanical stress; metal gate/high-$k$; strained device;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2009.2021007

Filename

4982720