Impact of Process-Induced Damage on MOSFET Reliability and Suppression of Damage by the use of NO-based Oxynitride Gate Dielectrics

摘要

Conventional SiO_2 gate oxide is found to showrnenhanced degradation due to cumulative plasma-induced damages as processed through back-end. However, an alternate oxynitride gate dielectric, namely, NO-nitrided SiO_2, demonstrates excellent immunity to plasma charging. It is observed that compared to SiO_2, NO-nitrided oxides show suppressed dependence of damage on charging collection area. A systematic study of effects of NO-anneal condition on the degree of resistance to charging shows that even minimal thermal budgets are capable of producing high quality gate oxides.