Pre-Metal Dielectric Stress Engineering by a Novel Plasma Treatment and Integration Scheme for nMOS Performance Improvement

For the first time, a transistor performance improvement is achieved by increasing the tensile stress of O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> -TEOS pre-metal dielectric (PMD) using a novel plasma treatment and integration scheme. Plasma-treated O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> -TEOS films show more tensile stress value about twice than that of an as-deposited O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3 </sub> -TEOS film. The novel process shows up to 10% improvement of I <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">on</sub> for nMOS without any cost of pMOS degradation