Benoit Froment

Combined synchrotron x-ray diffraction and wafer curvature measurements during Ni–Si reactive film formation

Combined x-ray diffraction and wafer curvature measurements during annealing of Ni thin films (13 nm) deposited on Si (001) reveal distinct stages in stress development and silicide growth. Thanks to this unique experimental setup, a clear correlation is established between force extrema at distinct temperatures and the appearance of new silicides. It is shown that the transient formation of Ni3Si2 has a strong influence on the overall stress development.

CMP-less integration of 40nm-gate totally silicided (TOSI) bulk transistors using selective S/D Si epitaxy and ultra-low gates

In this paper, we present an innovative way of fabricating CMOS transistors with totally Ni-silicided (Ni-TOSI) gates without using a CMP step before the full gate silicidation. The combination of the use of a hard-mask-capped ultra-low Si gate with a selective S/D epitaxy step enables us to obtain a well-behaved silicidation of the junctions and the full gate within one single step with minimal gate lengths of 40nm. Moreover, we show that the TOSI PMOS device performances are compatible with the 45nm-node LP requirements. Reliability data is added demonstrating that no additional breakdown mechanisms occur after the TOSI process.

Silicidation induced strain phenomena in totally silicided (TOSI) gate transistors

In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the performance and transport characteristics in totally Ni silicided (TOSI) devices. For two different TOSI integration schemes, we study transconductance variations of TOSI devices with respect to poly-Si gated devices. We find a clear signature of process induced strain related to the total gate silicidation step which depends largely on the integration scheme used for the fabrication of the TOSI devices.