Dual stress liner enhancement in hybrid orientation technology

Abstract

Hybrid orientation technology (HOT) has been successfully integrated with a dual stress liner (DSL) process to demonstrate outstanding PFET device characteristics in epitaxially grown (110) bulk silicon. Stress induced by the nitride MOL liners results in mobility enhancement that depends on the designed orientation of the gate, in agreement with theory. Compressive stressed liner films are utilized to increase HOT PFET saturation current to 635 uA/um I DSat at 100 nA/um I OFF for V DD= 1.0 V at a 45 nm gate length. The AC performance of a HOT ring oscillator shows 14% benefit from (110) silicon and an additional 8% benefit due to the compressive MOL film.