Epitaxial growth of strained Si 1− yC y films by the hot-wire cell method and its application to metal oxide semiconductor devices

Abstract

We succeeded in obtaining strained Si 1− y C y films at a substrate temperature of 200 °C by the hot-wire cell method. The substitutional carbon concentration in films annealed at 700 °C was 0.9%, while it was limited to 0.13% for a sample grown by gas-source molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) at a substrate temperature of 700 °C. We investigated the thermal stability of strained Si 1− y C y films for device application. Annealing at over 900 °C caused the formation of 3C-SiC and relaxation of the strain occurred. From this result, we found that the process temperature should be lower than 800 °C. A low-temperature MOSFET process, in which all process temperatures after deposition of Si 1− y C y were lower than 800 °C, was developed and a strained Si 1− y C y MOSFET was fabricated.