Impact of SOI thickness on device performance and gate oxide reliability of Ni fully silicide metal-gate strained SOI MOSFET

This study investigates the effects of oxide traps induced by SOI of various thicknesses (TSOI = 50, 70 and 90 nm) on the device performance and gate oxide TDDB reliability of Ni fully silicide metal-gate strained SOI MOSFETs capped with different stressed SiN contact-etch-stop-layer (CESL). The effects of different stress CESLs on the gate leakage currents of the SOI MOSFET devices are also investigated. For devices with high stress (either tensile or compressive) CESL, thinner TSOI devices have a smaller net remaining stress in gate oxide film than thicker TSOI devices, and thus possess a smaller bulk oxide trap (NBOT) and reveal a superior gate oxide reliability. On the other hand, the thicker TSOI devices show a superior driving capability, but it reveals an inferior gate oxide reliability as well as a larger gate leakage current. From low frequency noise (LFN) analysis, we found that thicker TSOI device has a higher bulk oxide trap (NBOT) density, which is induced by larger strain in the gate oxide film and is mainly responsible for the inferior gate oxide reliability. Presumably, the gate oxide film is bended up and down for the pand nMOSFETs, respectively, by the net stress in thicker TSOI devices in this CESL strain technology. In addition, the bending extent of gate oxide film of nMOSFETs is larger than that of pMOSFETs due to the larger net stress in gate oxide film resulting from additional compressive stress of shallow trench isolation (STI) pressed on SOI. Therefore, an appropriate SOI thickness design is the key factor to achieve superior device performance and reliability. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.