Highly Reliable Contacts to Silicon Enabled by Low Temperature Sputtered Graphenic Carbon

Abstract

Titanium silicide (TiSi) contacts are frequently used metal-silicon contacts but are known to diffuse into the active region under high current density stress pulses. Recently, we demonstrated that graphenic carbon (GC) deposited by CVD at 1000 °C on silicon has the same low Schottky barrier as TiSi, but a much improved reliability against high current density stress pulses. In this paper, we demonstrate now that the deposition of GC is possible at 100 °C – 400 °C by a sputter process. We show that the sputtered carbon-silicon contact is over 1 billion times more stable against high current density pulses than the conventionally used TiSi–Si junction, while it has the same or even a lower Schottky barrier. SC can be doped by nitrogen (CN) and this results in an even lower resistivity and improved stability. Scalability of the CN thickness down to 5 nm is demonstrated. The finding that there is a low temperature approach for using the excellent carbon properties has important consequences for the reliability of contacts to silicon and opens up the use of GC in a vast number of other applications.