The Performance Enhancement of PMOSFETs and Inverter Chains at Low Temperature and Low Voltage by Removing Plasma-Damaged Layers

Abstract

In this work we report on the improvement in cold temperature characteristics of PMOSFETs and inverter circuits by removing the plasma-damaged layer of the source/drain contacts. We removed the plasma-induced damage on the Si using a simple in situ Si soft treatment technique. We found by transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis that the damaged amorphous layer reduced from 52 Å to 42 Å and 35 Å with a treatment time of 10 and 20 s, respectively. As a result, the resistances of both the n+ and p+ contacts decreased for all contact sizes and the standard deviations at the cold temperature were suppressed by 45%. At −25 °C, the saturation current of the PMOSFET increased by 3% and the propagation delay time (tPD) decreased by 2%. The tPD increases by 19.3% when the temperature decreases from 85 °C to −25 °C, and the operating voltage decreases from 1.2 V to 0.95 V at the same time. However, this increase can be reduced to 17% by applying the soft treatment for 10 s. This simple and short time process will be considered essential for both mobile applications and automotive applications of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices requiring a low-voltage and low-temperature operation.