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Nickel silicide is a common contact material for current generation microelectronic devices. As the technology nodes become smaller, forming the NiSi phase with milli-second or below annealing is an attractive alternative to conventional RTA annealing because of the potential for increased device performance and yield. This paper will discuss the use of a dual beam laser spike annealing (LSA) to form...
Advanced millisecond annealing technologies are being implemented to enable scaling of silicidation of Ni for contacts. There are several aspects of the millisecond annealing process that must be optimized in order to minimize defects and improve yield. One critical aspect is that NiSi agglomeration must be suppressed at higher annealing temperatures. Typically, the onset of agglomeration can be detected...
Recently we reported the development of new dual beam laser spike annealing system that offers flexible temperature profiles and a broad range of process parameters. For example, the dwell time can be varied from a few hundred microseconds to several tens of milliseconds, while simultaneously allowing the substrate temperature to be lowered significantly to accommodate silicide processes. Short anneal...
A new dual-beam laser spike annealing (DB-LSA) technology is developed to expand the application space of non-melt laser annealing. In the standard LSA configuration, a single narrow laser beam is used to heat the wafer surface from substrate temperature to the peak annealing temperature close to silicon melt. In DB-LSA, a second wide laser beam is incorporated to preheat the wafer. The dual beam...
LSA was first introduced into mainstream semiconductor manufacturing for logic IC's at the 65 nm node, continuing the natural evolution of semiconductor thermal processing to higher temperatures (>1200??C) and shorter times (100's of microseconds). The initial application was a simple one-step LSA to assist spike-RTA in dopant activation of the source/drain and polysilicon gate regions. Since then,...
Ultra shallow junctions are increasingly important to overcome short channel effects, and sub-millisecond annealing offers the ability to control diffusion while simultaneously offering high activation levels. The ultra-fast annealing process needs tight uniformity control to provide consistent device performance across the wafer. The ultratech LSA-100A system features scan pattern overlap flexibility...
The use of strained SiGe is essential to improvement in device performance. However, the structure is susceptible to strain relaxation and wafer deformation during thermal annealing. The accumulation of stress in the wafer needs to be controlled to minimize photolithographic overlay errors. Laser spike annealing offers negligible pattern effects, closed-loop temperature control, and localized heating,...
The introduction of new materials in recent years puts more stringent requirements on thermal budget management. For example, high Ge concentration in e-SiGe used for strain engineering makes wafers prone to thermal plastic deformation which limits the maximum annealing temperature. In this paper, we will explore ways to expand the process window using sub-millisecond laser spike annealing. Focus...
Scaling of source/drain extension junctions continues to be a major focus for sub 45 nm planar CMOS process development. Device scalability, drive current, and leakage performance are determined by junction depth, activation, and residual disorder. These requirements have driven ion implants into the deep sub-keV regime and integration of millisecond anneals for activation. In this paper, we introduce...
Sub-melt millisecond annealing technologies have been widely accepted for current and future IC fabrication. Real-time temperature control, both within wafer and from wafer-to-wafer, is one of the key challenges that must be addressed for the successful introduction of any millisecond annealing technology into a production environment. In this paper, we show results from a novel pyrometry approach...
We report on the integration of sub-melt laser spike annealing (LSA) on W-gate stacked DRAM. We applied the LSA as a reactivation in back-end processes to comply with the considerable metal-pattern effects and strong DRAM thermal-budget. Improvements in drive currents of peripheral transistors (4 %/14 % for n/p-FETs) are achieved by using the LSA without incurring short channel effect (SCE) while...
Millisecond annealing is a key enabling technology for creating the ultra-shallow junctions of the 65 nm node and beyond. The very short thermal diffusion distances inherent in millisecond annealing exacerbate larger scale pattern density differences and can result in corresponding differences in annealing temperatures. This paper considers the three different methods of achieving millisecond annealing...
High energy borane (B2H6) gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) successfully enables a sub-10 nm box-shaped dopant profile without channeling tail, and steep gradient (2.5 nm/dec) in lateral direction. pFET using GCIB source/drain extension shows superior suppression of short channel effects and reduces the dependency of drive current on gate overlap capacitance variation for scaled devices. Moreover, the perimeter...
Laser thermal treatment of organosilicate coatings in a process characterized by extremely short dwell times and extremely high temperatures, generally referred to as laser spike anneal (LSA) appears to be a viable approach to post-porosity enhancement of mechanical properties. Exposure of organosilicates in both the dense and porous state to very high temperatures (500-1300 degC) for extremely short...
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