The effect of annealing temperatures on self-aligned replacement (damascene) TaCN-TaN-stacked gate pMOSFETs

In this paper, we report the first self-aligned replacement (Damascene) TaCN-TaN-stacked gate electrode pMOSFETs. The high-temperature (>1000°C) implant activation anneal was done prior to the metal electrode deposition. After the fabrication was completed, the transistors were then annealed at lower temperatures (300°C-600°C), which might affect the critical device parameters, such as subthreshold slope, threshold voltage, gate leakage, on, and off currents. Our data show that TaCN is a promising material for the metal-gate pMOSFETs due to the suitable metal work function and good thermal stability up to 500°C, which is much higher than the highest temperature required by the backend very large-scale integration process.