Characterization of 1.9- and 1.4-nm ultrathin gate oxynitride by oxidation of nitrogen-implanted silicon substrate

For gate oxide thinned down to 1.9 and 1.4 nm, conventional methods of incorporating nitrogen (N) in the gate oxide might become insufficient in stopping boron penetration and obtaining lower tunneling leakage. In this paper, oxynitride gate dielectric grown by oxidation of N-implanted silicon substrate has been studied. The characteristics of ultrathin gate oxynitride with equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of 1.9 and 1.4 nm grown by this method were analyzed with MOS capacitors under the accumulation conditions and compared with pure gate oxide and gate oxide nitrided by N₂O annealing. EOT of 1.9- and 1.4-nm oxynitride gate dielectrics grown by this method have strong boron penetration resistance, and reduce gate tunneling leakage current remarkably. High-performance 36-nm gate length CMOS devices and CMOS 32 frequency dividers embedded with 57-stage/201-stage CMOS ring oscillator, respectively, have been fabricated successfully, where the EOT of gate oxynitride grown by this method is 1.4 nm. At power supply voltage V_DD of 1.5 V drive current Ion of 802 μA/μm for NMOS and -487 μA/μm for PMOS are achieved at off-state leakage I_off of 3.5 nA/μm for NMOS and -3.0 nA/μm for PMOS.