Germanium pMOSFETs with Schottky-barrier germanide S/D, high-/spl kappa/ gate dielectric and metal gate

Schottky-barrier source/drain (S/D) germanium p-channel MOSFETs are demonstrated for the first time with HfAlO gate dielectric, HfN-TaN metal gate and self-aligned NiGe S/D. The drain drivability is improved over the silicon counterpart with PtSi S/D by as much as /spl sim/5 times due to the lower hole Schottky barrier of the NiGe-Ge contact than that of PtSi-Si contact as well as the higher mobility of Ge channel than that of Si.     

High-performance poly-silicon TFTs incorporating LaAlO/sub 3/ as the gate dielectric

We have integrated a high-/spl kappa/ LaAlO/sub 3/ dielectric into low-temperature poly-Si (LTPS) thin-film transistors (TFTs). Good TFT performance was achieved-such as a high drive current, low threshold voltage and subthreshold slope, as well as an excellent on/off current ratio and high gate-dielectric breakdown field. This was achieved without hydrogen passivation or special crystallization steps. The good performance is related to the high gate capacitance density and small equivalent-oxide thickness provided by the high-/spl kappa/ dielectric.     

High-performance poly-silicon TFTs using HfO/sub 2/ gate dielectric

High-performance low-temperature poly-Si thin-film transistors (TFTs) using high-/spl kappa/ (HfO/sub 2/) gate dielectric is demonstrated for the first time. Because of the high gate capacitance density and thin equivalent-oxide thickness contributed by the high-/spl kappa/ gate dielectric, excellent device performance can be achieved including high driving current, low subthreshold swing, low threshold voltage, and high ON/OFF current ratio. It should be noted that the ON-state current of high-/spl kappa/ gate-dielectric TFTs is almost five times higher than that of SiO/sub 2/ gate-dielectric TFTs. Moreover, superior threshold-voltage (V/sub th/) rolloff property is also demonstrated. All of these results suggest that high-/spl kappa/ gate dielectric is a good choice for high-performance TFTs.     

High mobility Ge-on-insulator p-channel MOSFETs using Pt germanide Schottky source/drain

We demonstrate, for the first time, successful operation of Schottky-barrier source/drain (S/D) germanium-on-insulator (GOI) MOSFETs, where a buried oxide and a silicon substrate are used as a gate dielectric and a bottom gate electrode, respectively. Excellent performance of p-type MOSFETs using Pt germanide S/D is presented in the accumulation mode. The hole mobility enhancement of 50%/spl sim/40% against the universal hole mobility of Si MOSFETs is obtained for the accumulated GOI channel with the SiO/sub 2/-Ge interface.     

Schottky-barrier S/D MOSFETs with high-k gate dielectrics and metal-gate electrode

This letter presents a low-temperature process to fabricate Schottky-barrier silicide source/drain transistors (SSDTs) with high-/spl kappa/ gate dielectric and metal gate. For p-channel SSDTs (P-SSDT) using PtSi sourece/drain (S/D) , excellent electrical performance of I/sub on//I/sub off//spl sim/10/sup 7/-10/sup 8/ and subthreshold slope of 66 mV/dec have been achieved. For n-channel SSDTs (N-SSDTs) using DySi/sub 2-x/ S/D , I/sub on//I/sub off/ can reach /spl sim/10/sup 5/ at V/sub ds/ of 0.2 V with two subthreshold slopes of 80 and 340 mV/dec. The low-temperature process relaxes the thermal budget of high-/spl kappa/ dielectric and metal-gate materials to be used in the future generation CMOS technology.     

High-voltage normally off GaN MOSFETs on sapphire substrates

Gallium nitride self-aligned MOSFETs were fabricated using low-pressure chemical vapor-deposited silicon dioxide as the gate dielectric and polysilicon as the gate material. Silicon was implanted into an unintentionally doped GaN layer using the polysilicon gate to define the source and drain regions, with implant activation at 1100/spl deg/C for 5 min in nitrogen. The GaN MOSFETs have a low gate leakage current of less than 50 pA for circular devices with W/L=800/128 /spl mu/m. Devices are normally off with a threshold voltage of +2.7 V and a field-effect mobility of 45 cm/sup 2//Vs at room temperature. The minimum on-resistance measured is 1.9 m/spl Omega//spl middot/cm/sup 2/ with a gate voltage of 34 V (W/L=800/2 /spl mu/m). High-voltage lateral devices had a breakdown voltage of 700 V with gate-drain spacing of 9 /spl mu/m (80 V//spl mu/m), showing the feasibility of self-aligned GaN MOSFETs for high-voltage integrated circuits.     

On the performance of single-gated ultrathin-body SOI Schottky-barrier MOSFETs

The authors study the dependence of the performance of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) Schottky-barrier (SB) MOSFETs on the SOI body thickness and show a performance improvement for decreasing SOI thickness. The inverse subthreshold slopes S extracted from the experiments are compared with simulations and an analytical approximation. Excellent agreement between experiment, simulation, and analytical approximation is found, which shows that S scales approximately as the square root of the gate oxide and the SOI thickness. In addition, the authors study the impact of the SOI thickness on the variation of the threshold voltage V/sub th/ of SOI SB-MOSFETs and find a nonmonotonic behavior of V/sub th/. The results show that to avoid large threshold voltage variations and achieve high-performance devices, the gate oxide thickness should be as small as possible, and the SOI thickness should be /spl sim/ 3 nm.     

Enhanced negative substrate bias degradation in nMOSFETs with ultrathin plasma nitrided oxide

The degradation induced by substrate hot electron (SHE) injection in 0.13-/spl mu/m nMOSFETs with ultrathin (/spl sim/2.0 nm) plasma nitrided gate dielectric was studied. Compared to the conventional thermal oxide, the ultrathin nitrided gate dielectric is found to be more vulnerable to SHE stress, resulting in enhanced threshold voltage (V/sub t/) shift and transconductance (G/sub m/) reduction. The severity of the enhanced degradation increases with increasing nitrogen content in gate dielectric with prolonged nitridation time. While the SHE-induced degradation is found to be strongly related to the injected electron energy for both conventional oxide , and plasma-nitrided oxide, dramatic degradation in threshold voltage shift for nitrided oxide is found to occur at a lower substrate bias magnitude (/spl sim/-1 V), compared to thermal oxide (/spl sim/-1.5 V). This enhanced degradation by negative substrate bias in nMOSFETs with plasma-nitrided gate dielectric is attributed to a higher concentration of paramagnetic electron trap precursors introduced during plasma nitridation.     

Ultra-thin decoupled plasma nitridation (DPN) oxynitride gate dielectric for 80-nm advanced technology

Balancing gate leakage reduction, device performance, and gate dielectric reliability is a major challenge for oxynitride used as a gate dielectric for advanced technology. As compared to RTONO oxynitride, pMOSFET threshold voltage shift and transconductance degradation have been problematic for devices using remote plasma nitridation (RPN) or decoupled plasma nitridation (DPN) process due to non-optimal nitrogen profile in the film. In this paper, we report that the nitrogen profile of DPN gate dielectric can be engineered primarily by tuning the plasma pressure after optimizing other DPN process parameters to solve these problems. An EOT of 15 /spl Aring/ (23-/spl Aring/ NMOS CETinv) DPN oxynitride is demonstrated to have an acceptable pMOS Vt, comparable transconductance, significantly (/spl sim/30/spl times/) longer pMOS time-to-breakdown reliability for packaged devices, and 5/spl times/ gate leakage reduction relative to a high quality RTONO used in industry. The high quality ultrathin DPN film is fabricated in a commercially available system, which is compatible with standard CMOS processing technology. These encouraging results make high-pressure DPN oxynitride an attractive gate dielectric candidate for 80-nm advanced technology and beyond.     

A novel high-performance asymmetric hetero-doped S/D high-voltage MOSFET

A novel high-voltage MOSFET structure, using a simple yet effective concept of an asymmetric hetero-doped source/drain (S/D) is proposed. The asymmetric hetero-doped S/D reduces the on-state resistance of the transistor due to the high doping used for device drain drift, provides excellent ruggedness for parasitic NPN turned-on due to a minimized n/sup +/ source spacer, and also raises the device breakdown voltage due to charge compensation in the composite drain drift region. Therefore, the asymmetric hetero-doped S/D structure allows the high voltage MOSFET to have a high current handling capability with a small device size. This in turn causes the R (sp, on) to be low, leading to high performance for the power device when used in a power integrated circuit. Measured results show that a 24-V breakdown voltage new device with a low-cost two-layer metal (Al) back-end achieves very low R (sp, on) of 0.166 m/spl Omega//spl middot/cm/sup 2/. Furthermore, the new device with a 65-V high-side capability achieves good isolation performance even when switching S/D to -20 V and also gets a cutoff frequency of 13 GHz at a gate voltage of 5.5 V.     

A study of relaxation current in high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks

Dielectric relaxation currents in SiO/sub 2//Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ and SiO/sub 2//HfO/sub 2/ high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks are studied in this paper. We studied the thickness dependence, gate voltage polarity dependence and temperature dependence of the relaxation current in high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks. It is found that high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks show different characteristics than what is expected based on the dielectric material polarization model. By the drain current variation measurement in n-channel MOSFET, we confirm that electron trapping and detrapping in the high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stacks is the cause of the dielectric relaxation current. From substrate injection experiments, it is also concluded that the relaxation current is mainly due to the traps located near the SiO/sub 2//high-/spl kappa/ interface. As the electron trapping induces a serious threshold voltage shift problem, a low trap density at the SiO/sub 2//high-/spl kappa/ interface is a key requirement for high-/spl kappa/ dielectric stack application and reliability in MOS devices.     

Analytical modelling of threshold voltage for underlap Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator MOSFET

In this article, surface-potential-based analytical threshold voltage model for underlap Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator MOSFET (underlap-SOI) is developed by solving two-dimensional Poisson equation. The gate underlap at source/drain (S/D) has different boundary conditions as compared to channel region under the gate dielectric that divide the whole channel into three regions. It leads us to derive the new surface potential model for three different channel regions, i.e. the region under the gate dielectric and two gate underlap regions at S/D. The effects of underlap length, channel length, body thickness, channel doping concentration, metal gate work function and gate dielectric constant on threshold voltage have been included in our model. The threshold voltage dependence on different device parameters has been studied using analytical model and simulations. The closeness between the simulation results and model results show that the analytical model accurately calculate the threshold voltage values for large range of device parameters.     

A fast measurement technique of MOSFETI/sub d/-V/sub g/ characteristics

In this letter, we developed an improved ultrafast measurement method for threshold voltage V/sub th/ measurement of MOSFETs. We demonstrate I/sub d/--V/sub g/ curve measurement within 1 /spl mu/s to extract the threshold voltage of MOSFET. Errors arising from MOSFET parasitics and measurement setup are analyzed quantitatatively. The ultrafast V/sub th/ measurement is highly needed in the investigation of gate dielectric charge trapping effect when traps with short detrapping time constants are present. Application in charge trapping measurement on HfO/sub 2/ gate dielectric is demonstrated.     

The effect of IrO/sub 2/--IrO/sub 2/--Hf--LaAlO/sub 3/ gate dielectric on the bias-temperature instability of 3-D GOI CMOSFETs

We have studied the bias-temperature instability of three-dimensional self-aligned metal-gate/high-/spl kappa//Germanium-on-insulator (GOI) CMOSFETs, which were integrated on underlying 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOSFETs. The devices used IrO/sub 2/--IrO/sub 2/-Hf dual gates and a high-/spl kappa/ LaAlO/sub 3/ gate dielectric, and gave an equivalent-oxide thickness (EOT) of 1.4 nm. The metal-gate/high-/spl kappa//GOI p-and n-MOSFETs displayed threshold voltage (V/sub t/) shifts of 30 and 21 mV after 10 MV/cm, 85/spl deg/C stress for 1 h, comparable with values for the control two-dimensional (2-D) metal-gate/high-/spl kappa/-Si CMOSFETs. An extrapolated maximum voltage of -1.2 and 1.4 V for a ten-year lifetime was obtained from the bias-temperature stress measurements on the GOI CMOSFETs.     

Design of enhanced Schottky-barrier AlGaAs/GaAs MODFET's using highly doped p+surface layers

The design and performance of enhanced Schottky-barrier height modulation-doped AlGaAs/GaAs field-effect transistors (ESMODFET's) is discussed. Results are presented showing that the addition of a thin highly doped p⁺layer under the gate can increase the forward biased gate turn-on voltage from 0.8 V (conventional MODFET) to as high as 1.6 V. A mathematical model is presented that predicts the thickness and doping of the heterostructure layers required to obtain a given threshold voltage and effective Schottky-barrier height. It is predicted that this enhanced Schottky barrier will allow increased gate-voltage swings and thus significantly improve the noise margin of enhancement-mode MODFET circuits.     

Engineering density of semiconductor-dielectric interface states to modulate threshold voltage in OFETs

Threshold-voltage control is critical to the further development of pentacene organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). In this paper, we demonstrate that the threshold voltage can be tuned through chemical treatment of the gate dielectric layer. We show that oxygen plasma treatment of an organic polymer gate dielectric, parylene, introduces traps at the semiconductor-dielectric interface that strongly affect the OFET performance. Atomic force microscopy, optical microscopy using crossed-polarizers, and current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characterization were performed on treated and untreated devices. A model is presented to account for the effects of trap-introduced charges, both 1) fixed charges (2.0/spl times/10/sup -6/ C/cm/sup 2/) that shift the threshold voltage from -17 to +116 V and 2) mobile charges (1.1/spl times/10/sup -6/ C/cm/sup 2/) that increase the parasitic bulk conductivity. This technique offers a potential method of tuning threshold voltage at the process level.     

Top-gate TFTs using 13.56 MHz PECVD microcrystalline silicon

Top-gate thin-film transistors (TFTs) with microcrystalline silicon (/spl mu/c-Si) channel layers deposited using standard 13.56 MHz plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition were fabricated at a maximum processing temperature of 250/spl deg/C. The TFTs employ amorphous silicon nitride (a-SiN) as the gate dielectric layer. The 80-nm-thick /spl mu/c-Si channel layer showed a dark conductivity of the order of 10/sup -7/ S/cm and a crystalline volume fraction of over 80%. The /spl mu/c-Si TFTs showed a field effect mobility of 0.85 cm/sup 2//V/spl middot/s, a threshold voltage of 4.8 V, a subthreshold slope of 1 V/dec, and an ON/OFF current ratio of /spl sim/10/sup 7/. More importantly, the TFTs were very stable under gate bias stress, offering promise for organic light-emitting display (OLED) applications.     

Micro-Raman temperature measurements for electric field assessment in active AlGaN-GaN HFETs

Temperature profiles in the source/drain (S/D) opening of a single finger AlGaN-GaN heterostructure field-effect transistor were studied at increasing S/D voltages by micro-Raman spectroscopy with <1 /spl mu/m spatial resolution. These profiles imply high field regions near the gate edge of length /spl sim/0.4 /spl mu/m for S/D voltages between 45 and 75 V. Electric field strengths of /spl sim/1.2 and /spl sim/1.9 MV/cm are estimated for 45 and 75 V S/D voltage. The experimental results are in excellent agreement with 2-D Monte Carlo simulations.     

Fully-depleted SOI devices with TaSiN gate, HfO/sub 2/ gate dielectric, and elevated source/drain extensions

We report for the first time the performance of ultrathin film fully-depleted (FD) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS transistors using HfO/sub 2/ gate dielectric and TaSiN gate material. The transistors feature 100-150 /spl Aring/ silicon film thickness and selective epitaxial silicon growth in the source/drain extension regions. TaSiN-gate shows good threshold voltage control using an undoped channel, which reduces threshold voltage variation with silicon film thickness and discrete, random dopant placement. Device processing for CMOS fabrication is drastically simplified by the use of the same gate material for both n- and p-MOSFETs. Electrical characterization results illustrate the combined impact of using high-k dielectric and metal gate on the performance of ultrathin film FD SOI devices.     

Effects of deuterium anneal on MOSFETs with HfO/sub 2/ gate dielectrics

The effects of high-temperature (600/spl deg/C) anneal in a dilute deuterium (N/sub 2/ : D/sub 2/= 96 : 4) atmosphere was first investigated and evaluated in comparison to high-temperature forming gas (N/sub 2/ : H/sub 2/= 96 : 4) anneal (600/spl deg/C) and nonanneal samples. The high-temperature deuterium anneal was as effective as the forming gas anneal in improving MOSCAP and MOSFET characteristics such as the C-V curve, drain current, subthreshold swing, and carrier mobility. These can be attributed to the improved interface quality by D/sub 2/ atoms. However, unlike the forming gas anneal, the deuterium anneal provided the hafnium oxide (HfO/sub 2/) gate dielectric MOSFET with better reliability characteristics such as threshold voltage (V/sub T/) stability under high voltage stress.