Koushik Ramadoss, Joshua Holt, L. Daté, Safdar Muhammad, Jesse Kalliomäki, Fernanda Albrechtvechietti, William Charles, Athena Pang, Shubhendra Jain, B. Briggs, Ludovico Megalini, Michael Chudzik, Dallas Morisette, James A. Cooper
In this work, we demonstrate a novel oxidation-free gate oxide process consisting of a two-step surface preparation treatment, followed by atomic layer deposition of SiO 2 and a post-deposition anneal in nitrogen. The surface treatment includes a 1300°C anneal in hydrogen and dilute silane, followed by decoupled plasma nitridation (DPN). Long channel MOSFETs fabricated with this process show a 1.5X improvement in peak field effect mobility compared with devices utilizing a standard thermal oxide and NO anneal. The MOSFETs had a positive threshold voltage, low gate leakage, and a breakdown field of nearly 10 MV/cm.