Improved Electrical Characteristics of Ge FinFET CMOS by Plasma-Enhanced Oxidation and Partial Nitridation With Supercritical Fluid Treatment

A novel plasma-enhanced supercritical phase fluid (SCF) process is proposed on a Ge FinFET CMOS inverter to resolve the insufficient oxidation in large-size chamber and unavailable nitridation effects with a SCF system. The metastable low oxidation states and interface traps in high-k and interfacial layer are clearly reduced by the supplemented oxygen and nitrogen radicals in SCF. As a result, Ge FinFET with enhanced oxidation and partially nitridation (EOPN)-SCF treatment exhibits an EOT value of 0.66 nm, drive current of 2.6 mA/<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>m (@V<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{\text {OV}}=1$ </tex-math></inline-formula>V), leakage current of 0.3 nA/<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>m, ION/IOFF of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${7}\times {10} ^{{5}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, S.S. value of 88 mV/dec, DIT of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${3}\times {10} ^{{11}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> cm-2eV-1, fewer border traps, better reliability characteristics, more symmetrical VIN-VOUT and peak voltage gain of 58 V/V for CMOS inverter.