Observation of halo implant from the drain side reaching the source side and vice versa in extremely short p-channel transistors

The merging of halo implants from the drain side and the source side creates a maximum in the magnitude of the threshold voltage and thus a minimum in the off-current in the metal-oxide-semiconductor transistors. This paper demonstrates that the halo implant from the drain side can cross-over to the source side and vice versa for the look-ahead transistor test structures (transistor test structures with gate length smaller than that of the target transistor). The phenomenon of the cross-over of halo implant is more readily observed in PMOS transistors compared to NMOS transistors because for the same mask gate length, the effective channel length of PMOS transistor tends to be smaller than that of NMOS transistor. The advantage of the cross-over of halo implants can be understood as follows. Since the hole mobility is smaller than the electron mobility in silicon, PMOS transistor tends to have smaller on-current (I_on) than NMOS transistor. The on-current can be increased by using PMOS transistor with smaller mask gate length compared to the NMOS transistor. However, this approach will make the PMOS transistor very sensitive to the statistical variation in the gate electrode length during manufacturing. By making use of the above reported phenomenon, PMOS transistor can be made shorter without running into manufacturing control problem, resulting in bigger I_on but the penalty is that the I_off will become significantly higher.