Effect of mechanical stress induced by etch-stop nitride: impact on deep-submicron transistor performance

This paper reports that process-induced mechanical stress affects the performance of short-channel MOSFETs, and focuses on the effect of a plasma-enhanced CVD nitride contact-etch-stop layer. The stress in the channel region induced by the nitride layer changes transconductance ( G m), thereby chang...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Microelectronics and reliability 2002-02, Vol.42 (2), p.201-209
Main Authors: Ito, Shinya, Namba, Hiroaki, Hirata, Tsuyoshi, Ando, Koichi, Koyama, Shin, Ikezawa, Nobuyuki, Suzuki, Tatsuya, Saitoh, Takehiro, Horiuchi, Tadahiko
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:This paper reports that process-induced mechanical stress affects the performance of short-channel MOSFETs, and focuses on the effect of a plasma-enhanced CVD nitride contact-etch-stop layer. The stress in the channel region induced by the nitride layer changes transconductance ( G m), thereby changing the device performance. When the nitride stress varies from +300 MPa (tensile) to −1.4 GPa (compressive), NMOSFET performance degrades by up to 8% and PMOSFET performance improves up to 7%. These changes are caused by the modulation of the electron/hole mobilities, so controlling process-induced stress and considering this mobility change in a precise transistor model are necessary for deep-submicron transistor design.
ISSN:0026-2714
1872-941X
DOI:10.1016/S0026-2714(01)00238-4