Sub-50-nm physical gate length CMOS technology and beyond usingsteep halo

Sub-50-nm CMOS devices are investigated using steep halo and shallow source/drain extensions. By using a high-ramp-rate spike annealing (HRR-SA) process and high-dose halo, 45-nm CMOS devices are fabricated with drive currents of 650 and 300 μA/μm for an off current of less than 10 nA/μm at 1.2 V with T_ox^inv =2.5 nm. For an off current less than 300 nA/μm, 33-nm pMOSFETs have a high drive current of 400 uA/μm. Short-channel effect and reverse short-channel effect are suppressed simultaneously by using the HRR-SA process to activate a source/drain extension (SDE) after forming a deep source/drain (S/D). This process sequence is defined as a reverse-order S/D (R-S/D) formation. By using this formation, 24-nm nMOSFETs are achieved with a high drive current of 800 μA/μm for an off current of less than 300 μA/μm at 1.2 V. This high drive current might be a result of a steep halo structure reducing the spreading resistance of source/drain extensions     

The design and characterization of nonoverlapping superself-aligned BiCMOS technology

An optimal device structure for integrating bipolar and CMOS is described. Process design and device performance are discussed. Both the vertical n-p-n and MOS devices have non-overlapping super self-aligned (NOVA) structures. The base-collector and source/drain junction capacitances are significantly reduced. This structure allows complete silicidation of active polysilicon electrodes, cutting down the parasitic resistances of source, drain, and extrinsic base. The critical gate and emitter regions are protected from direct reactive ion etching exposure and damage. All shallow junctions are contacted by polysilicon electrodes which suppress silicide-induced leakage. An arsenic buried layer minimizes collector resistance and collector-substrate capacitance. A novel selective epitaxy capping technique suppresses lateral autodoping from the arsenic buried layer. Fully recessed oxide with polysilicon buffer layer is used to achieve a low defect density device isolation. CMOS with L_eff=1.1 μm and W _n/W_p=10 μm/10 μm exhibits averaged ring oscillator delay of 128 ps/stage. An n-p-n transistor with f_T, of 14 GHz and low-power emitter-coupled logic ring oscillator with a delay of 97 ps/stage have been fabricated     

Partially depleted SOI NMOSFET's with self-aligned polysilicon gateformed on the recessed channel region

A new SOI NMOSFET with a “LOCOS-like” shape self-aligned polysilicon gate formed on the recessed channel region has been fabricated by a mix-and-match technology. For the first time, we developed a new scheme for implementing self-alignment in both source/drain and gate structure in recessed channel device fabrication. Symmetric source/drain doping profile was obtained and highly symmetric electrical characteristics were observed. Drain current measured from 0.3 μm SOI devices with V_z of 0.773 V and T_ox=7.6 nm is 360 μA/μm at V_GS=3.5 V and V _DS=2.5 V. Improved breakdown characteristics were obtained and the BV_DSS (the drain voltage for 1 nA/μm of I_D at T_GS=0 V) of the device with L_eff=0.3 μm under the floating body condition was as high as 3.7 V     

Design of 10-nm-scale recessed asymmetric Schottky barrier MOSFETs

We have proposed and simulated a new 10-nm and sub-10 nm n-MOSFET that has a recessed channel and asymmetric source/drain Schottky Contacts (RASC MOSFETs). The recessed channel can effectively suppress short-channel effects, and the asymmetric source/drain contacts in which a higher Schottky barrier at the source contact can yield smaller off-state current while a lower Schottky barrier at the drain can yield larger on-state current. The simulated results show that the device can exhibit an on/off ratio as high as 10⁶ and an on-state current of 393 μA/μm with a supply voltage of 1.0 V. Furthermore, the parameters of RASC MOSFETs are rather insensitive to size variations. These characteristics make the 10-nm or even sub-10 nm transistors potentially suitable for logic and memory applications     

On the punchthrough phenomenon in submicron MOS transistors

As the channel length of MOS transistors reduces to the submicron dimension, the punchthrough becomes more of a surface-initiated and gate-controlled phenomenon. A surface diffusion current (I_sdif) originates from the injection of minority carriers from the source junction due to the combined effect of drain-induced-barrier-lowering (DIBL) and surface-band-bending (Δφ_so). The DIBL effect increases rapidly with decreasing channel length. In addition, the extracted Δφ_so from the punchthrough current indicates that surface space charges at the source edge shift from the accumulation/depletion mode for long submicron devices (≈0.62 μm) to the strong-inversion mode for deep submicron devices (≈0.12 μm). In general, I_sdif dominates over the low drain bias range and eventually converts to the bulk space-charge-limited current (I_scl) as the drain bias increases and the source/drain depletion regions connect. The drain bias for this conversion to occur strongly depends on the channel dimension. Only intermediate submicron devices (≈0.37 μm) in this study clearly show both the surface and bulk (space-charge-limited) punchthrough components. For long submicron devices, I_sdif essentially dominates, while for deep submicron devices, it converts rapidly to I_scl over the drain bias range investigated. A semi-empirical closed form equation is proposed to describe both I_sdif and I_scl and their merging over the entire range of drain bias     

Sub-quarter-micrometer CMOS on ultrathin (400 Å) SOI

MOS transistors with effective channel lengths down to 0.2 μm have been fabricated in fully depleted, ultrathin (400 Å) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) films. These devices do not exhibit punchthrough, even for the smallest channel lengths, and have performance characteristics comparable to deep-submicrometer bulk transistors. The NMOS devices have a p⁺-polysilicon gate, and the PMOS devices have an n⁺-polysilicon gate, giving threshold voltages close to 1 V with very light channel doping. Because the series resistance associated with the source and drain regions can be very high in such thin SOI films, a titanium salicide process was used using a 0.25 μm oxide spacer. With this process, the sheet resistance of the silicided SOI layer is approximately 5 Ω/□. However, the devices still exhibit significant series resistance, which is likely due to contact resistance between the silicide and silicon source/drain regions     

CMOS on buried nitride—A VLSI SOI technology

A CMOS technology in silicon on insulator (SOI) for VLSI applications is presented. The insulator is a buried silicon nitride formed by nitrogen implantation and annealing. The CMOS devices are fabricated in the superficial monocrystalline silicon layer without an epitaxial process, 1-µm PMOS and 2-µm NMOS transistors have been realized, which have been used to built inverters, ring Oscillators, and other circuits. With 40-nm gate oxide the transistors withstand gate and drain voltages of 10 V. Mobilities, subthreshold behavior, and leakage currents are nearly the same as in bulk-CMOS devices. Ring-oscillator measurements yield inverter delay times of 230 ps and power delay products of 14 fJ.     

SOI MOSFET with buried body strap by wafer bonding

Although the buried oxide in the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOSFET makes possible higher performance circuits, it is also responsible for various floating body effects, including the kink effect, drain current transients, and history dependence of output characteristics. It is difficult to incorporate an effective contact to the body because of limitations imposed by the SOI structure. One candidate, which maintains device symmetry, is the lateral body contact. However, high lateral body resistance makes the contact effective only in narrow width devices. In this work, a buried lateral body contact in SOI is described which consists of a low-resistance polysilicon strap running under the MOSFET body along the device width. MOSFET's with effective channel length of 0.17 μm have been fabricated incorporating this buried body strap, showing improved breakdown characteristics. Low leakage of the source and drain junctions demonstrates that the buried strap is compatible with deep submicron devices. Device modeling and analysis are used to quantify the effect of strap resistance on device performance. By accounting for the lateral resistance of the body, the model can be used to determine the maximum allowable device width, given the requirement of maintaining an adequate body contact     

Sub-100-nm vertical MOSFET with threshold voltage adjustment

Sub-100-nm vertical MOSFET has been developed for fabrication with low cost processing. This is the first vertical MOSFET design that combines 1) a vertical L_DD structure processed with implantation and diffusion steps, 2) high-pressure oxide growing at source/drain (S/D) regions to reduce the gate overlapped capacitances, and 3) threshold voltage adjustment with a doped APCVD film. The drive current per unit channel width and S/D punch-through voltage are higher than that of previously published vertical MOSFETs. Fabrication processes are well established, and equipment of the 1 μm CMOS generation can be used to fabricate sub-100-nm channel length MOSFETs with good electrical characteristics and high performance     

Demonstration of submicron depletion-mode GaAs MOSFETs withnegligible drain current drift and hysteresis

We successfully fabricated submicron depletion-mode GaAs MOSFETs with negligible hysteresis and drift in drain current using Ga₂ O₃(Gd₂O₃) as the gate oxide. The 0.8-μm gate-length device shows a maximum drain current density of 450 mA/mm and a peak extrinsic transconductance of 130 mS/mm. A short-circuit current gain cutoff frequency (f_T) of 17 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency (f_max) of 60 GHz were obtained from the 0.8 μm×60 μm device. The absence of drain current drift and hysteresis along with excellent characteristics in the submicron devices is a significant advance toward the manufacture of commercially useful GaAs MOSFETs     

Comparison of self-heating effect in GAA and SOI mosfets

An analytical model is developed to estimate the effect of the scaling of the buried oxide on the heat flow in SOI devices. The heat evacuation is shown to follow the buried oxide thickness to the n-th power with −0.5 > n > −1, and it strongly depends on device dimensions. Three experimental independent evidences of reduced self-heating in GAA devices are provided and analyzed in the light of an analytical model. The advantage of the GAA structure is to replace the buried oxide below the channel by a back polysilicon gate that benefits for a much larger thermal conductivity. To achieve the same result in SOI devices, the buried oxide thickness should be reduced down to twice the gate oxide thickness, which unfortunately would also lead to a dramatic increase of source and drain parasitic capacitances. In the GAA transistor, on the contrary, source and drain regions still lie on the thick buried oxide layer such that those parasitic elements keep a low value.     

The investigation of key technologies for sub-0.1-μm CMOS devicefabrication

The fabrication of sub-0.1-μm CMOS devices and ring oscillator circuits has been successfully explored. The key technologies include: lateral local super-steep-retrograde (SSR) channel doping with heavy ion implantation, 40-nm ultrashallow source/drain (S/D) extension, 3-nm nitrided gate oxide, dual p⁺/n⁺ poly-Si gate electrode, double sidewall scheme, e-beam lithography and RIE etching for sub-0.1-μm poly-Si gate pattern, thin and low sheet resistance SALICIDE process, etc. By these innovations in the technologies, high-performance sub-0.1-μm CMOS devices with excellent short-channel effects (SCEs) and good driving ability have been fabricated successfully; the shortest channel length is 70 nm. 57 stage unloaded 0.1-μm CMOS ring oscillator circuits exhibiting delay 23.8 ps/stage at 1.5 V, and 17.5 ps/stage and 12.5 ps/stage at 2 V and 3 V, respectively, are achieved     

Sub-40 nm SOI V-groove n-MOSFETs

We present output and transfer characteristics of single-gated, 36 nm, 46 nm and 56 nm channel length SOI MOSFETs with a V-groove design. For the shortest devices we find transconductances as high as 900 μS/μm and drive currents of 490 μA/μm at V_gs - V _th=0.6 V. The V-groove approach combines the advantages of a controlled, extremely abrupt doping profile between the highly doped source/drain and the undoped channel region with an excellent suppression of short-channel effects. In addition, our V-groove design has the potential of synthesizing devices in the 10 nm range     

A fully complementary BiCMOS technology for 10 V mixed-signalcircuit applications

A 10 V fully complementary BiCMOS technology, HBC-10, has been developed for high speed, low noise and high precision mixed signal system integration applications. In this technology, two varieties of CMOS transistors have been implemented for 10 V analog and 5 V digital applications. A gate oxide thickness of 30 nm is utilized for the 10 V CMOS transistors with a lightly doped drain extension added to the NMOS structure to achieve device lifetime in excess of 10 years. A gate oxide thickness of 18 nm is used for 5 V CMOS logic circuits. These transistors are specially architected so that they may also serve as analog transistors in 5 V circuit applications. The 5 V NMOS transistor lifetime is guaranteed by use of a double diffused drain structure. The active devices are isolated by a fully recessed 1.5 μm oxide grown under high pressure conditions. Use of high pressure steam, plus combining diffusion operations where possible, results in a low overall thermal budget. This allows the up-diffusion of buried layers to be minimized so that a thin, 1.6 μm epitaxial silicon layer is sufficient to support 10 V bipolar transistors. The resultant vertical PNP and NPN transistors are characterized with cut-off frequencies of more than 1.3 GHz and 5 GHz, respectively. Likewise, the associated products of the current gain and Early voltage of PNP and NPN bipolar transistors are more than 1000 and 6000 V, respectively. A precision, buried Zener diode (for voltage reference applications), PtSi Schottky diode, polysilicon-oxide-polysilicon capacitor and trimmable thin film resistor are integrated into this process. This wide variety of passive and active components is essential for system integration and has been carefully designed for precision analog applications. The total number of masking operations is 23, which includes double layer metallization     

Fully depleted CMOS/SOI device design guidelines for low-powerapplications

We report the fully depleted (FD) CMOS/SOI device design guidelines for low-power applications. Optimal technology, device and circuit parameters are derived and compared with bulk CMOS based design. The differences and similarities are summarized. Device design guidelines using devices with L=0.1 μm for FDSOI low-power applications are presented using an empirical drain saturation current model fitted to experimental data. The model is verified in the deep-submicron regime by two-dimensional (2-D) simulation. For L=0.1 μm FDSOI low-power technology, optimum speed and lower-power occurs at V_dd=3V_th and V_dd=1.5 V_th, respectively. Optimum buried oxide thickness is found to be between 300 and 400 nm for low-power applications. Optimum transistor sizing is when the driver device capacitance is 0.3 times the total load capacitance. Similarly optimum gate oxide thickness is when the driver device gate capacitance is 0.2-0.6 times the total load capacitance for performance and 0.1-0.2 for low-power, respectively. Finally optimum stage ratio for driving large loads is around 2-4 for both high-performance and low-power     

High performance of silicided silicon-sidewall source and drain (S4D) structure

A silicided silicon-sidewall source and drain (S⁴D) structure is proposed for sub-0.1-μm devices. The merit of the S⁴D structure is that the series resistance of the source and drain is significantly reduced since the silicide layer is attached very close to the gate electrode and the silicon sidewall can be doped very highly. Thus, very high drain current drive can be expected, Another advantage of this structure is that the source and drain extensions are produced by the solid-phase diffusion of boron from the highly doped silicon-sidewall. Thus, shallow extensions with very high doping can be realized. A 75-nm gate length pMOSFET fabricated with this structure is shown to exhibit excellent electrical characteristics     

Effects of ion implantation on deep-submicrometer, drain-engineeredMOSFET technologies

The effects of ion implantation on the reliability of thin-oxide (7-nm) MOS structures using drain engineering, e.g. lightly doped-drain (LDD), Inverse-T, large-angle-tilt-implanted drain (LATID), are examined. High-dose, conventional source/drain implants with no spacer present are seen to degrade oxide integrity severely by increasing the gate-to-diffusion leakage along the gate perimeter. The oxide degradation results in a reduction of the oxide breakdown strength rather than an increase in the perimeter shorting defect density. Gate oxide integrity is improved if oxide spacer technologies are used prior to source/drain implantation. To be fully effective these spacers must be thick enough to stop ion penetration at the edge of the polysilicon gate. Oxide spacers grown by reoxidation to ion-implant-induced gate-oxide degradation than oxide spacers formed by CVD oxide. The bird's beak which forms during the reoxidation step is thought to improve gate reliability by thickening the gate oxide at the gate-feature edge. No yield loss was observed for the low doses (<10 ¹⁴ As/cm²) used for LDD implants. Inverse-T- and GOLD-type devices exhibit the same edge degradation as conventional devices but are further affected by the implant which penetrates the thin T-bar     

A new 0.25-μm recessed-channel MOSFET with selectivelyhalo-doped channel and deep graded source/drain

To improve the performance and reliability of deep submicron MOS devices, a gate-recessed MOSFET (GR-MOSFET), which has a selectively halo-doped recessed channel and a deep graded source/drain formed without counterdoping, is proposed. The GR-MOS structure, which adopts a new doping concept, eliminates the tradeoff between drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL) and hot-carrier effect, which are important to deep submicron device design. It also reduces the V_T lowering effect and the lateral electric field at the drain. A 0.25-μm GR-MOSFET with a 10-nm gate oxide has exhibited 15% higher transconductance and 10% increased saturation current at V_D=V _G=3.3 V, 1 V higher BV_DSS, and six times less substrate current compared with an LDD-MOSFET of the same device dimensions     

21-ps 0.1-μm CMOS devices operating at room temperature

High-speed complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-inverter ring oscillators with the shortest gate length of 0.17 μm were fabricated by a conventional large-scale integrated (LSI) technology. The propagation delays were 21 ps / stage (2.0 V) at room temperature and 17 ps / stage (2.0 V) at 80 K. These results are the fastest records reported for bulk CMOS devices as of today. The results were obtained by reducing effective drain junction capacitances with “double-finger gates,” and devices will probably be faster if the areas are completely proportionally reduced to the feature size. Though it is important for CMOS devices to increase drain currents, a silicidation technique for source and drain was not necessary for the tested devices to reduce series resistance     

Sub-60-nm quasi-planar FinFETs fabricated using a simplifiedprocess

N-channel double-gate metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) FinFETs with gate and fin dimensions as small as 30 nm have been fabricated using a new, simplified process. Short channel effects are effectively suppressed when the Si fin width is less than two-thirds of the gate length. The drive current for typical devices is found to be above 500 μA/μm (or 1 mA/μm, depending on the definition of the width of the double-gate device) for V_g-V _t=V_d=1 V. The electrical gate oxide thickness in these devices is 21 Å, determined from the first FinFET capacitance-versus-voltage characteristics obtained to date. These results indicate that the FinFET is a promising structure for the future manufacturing of integrated circuits with sub-60-nm feature size, and that double-gate MOSFETs can meet international technology roadmap for semiconductors performance specifications without aggressive scaling of the gate-oxide thickness