Formation of titanium silicide by Millisecond Anneal

Abstract

The development of the MilliSecond Anneals (MSA) technology allows the use of short dwell time coupled with a high peak temperature in order to significantly reduce the global thermal budget. These points are fundamental in the phase transformation occurring in silicide materials: the high temperature allows the phase change and the short dwell time reduces the materials ability to diffuse and create electrical shorts and leakage. The main application using MSA for silicide steps is performed on Nickel or Nickel Platinum alloy, used in advance CMOS technology as 40 nm node and below. In this work, the capability of the Titanium to be silicided during millisecond anneal is compared to the performance of Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) which has a high thermal budget above 750°C for few seconds. Full sheet sample are used to compare the phase formation of TiSi <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> done either by RTP or by MSA process. The phase transition is followed by Rs measurement as function of the temperature and the created phases itself were characterised by XRD. The final goal of the study is to check the integration capability of Titanium silicide by MSA in a full process flow needing very low thermal budget.