High-Performance High-¿/Metal Gates for 45nm CMOS and Beyond with Gate-First Processing

Abstract

Gate-first integration of band-edge (BE) high-κ/metal gate nFET devices with dual stress liners and silicon-on-insulator substrates for the 45nm node and beyond is presented. We show the first reported demonstration of improved short channel control with high-κ/metal gates (HK/MG) enabled by the thinnest T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">inv</sub> (≪12Å) for BE nFET devices to-date, consistent with simulations showing the need for ≪14Å T <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">inv</inf> at Lgate≪35nm. We report the highest BE HK/MG nFET Idsat values at 1.0V operation. We also show for the first time BE high-κ/metal gate pFET's fabricated with gate-first high thermal budget processing with thin T <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">inv</sub> (≪13Å) and low Vts appropriate for pFET devices. The reliability in these devices was found to be consistent with technology requirements. Integration of high-κ/metal gate nFET's into CMOS devices yielded large SRAM arrays.