Effectiveness of Stressors in Aggressively Scaled FinFETs

Abstract

The stress transfer efficiency (STE) and impact of process-induced stress on carrier mobility enhancement in aggressively scaled FinFETs are studied for different stressor technologies, substrate types, and gate-stack formation processes. TCAD simulations show that strained-source/drain STE is 1.5× larger for bulk FinFETs than for SOI FinFETs. Although a gate-last process substantially enhances longitudinal stress within the channel region, it provides very little improvement in electron mobility over that achieved with a gate-first process. Guidelines for FinFET stressor technology optimization are provided, and performance enhancement trends for future technology nodes are projected.