High performance germanium MOSFETs

Abstract

Ge is a very promising material as future channel materials for nanoscale MOSFETs due to its high mobility and thus a higher source injection velocity, which translates into higher drive current and smaller gate delay. However, for Ge to become main-stream, surface passivation and heterogeneous integration of crystalline Ge layers on Si must be achieved. We have demonstrated growth of fully relaxed smooth single crystal Ge layers on Si using a novel multi-step growth and hydrogen anneal process without any graded buffer SiGe layer. Surface passivation of Ge has been achieved with its native oxynitride (GeO x N y ) and high-permittivity (high-k) metal oxides of Al, Zr and Hf. High mobility MOSFETs have been demonstrated in bulk Ge with high-k gate dielectrics and metal gates. However, due to their smaller bandgap and higher dielectric constant, most high mobility materials suffer from large band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) leakage currents and worse short channel effects. We present novel, Si and Ge based heterostructure MOSFETs, which can significantly reduce the BTBT leakage currents while retaining high channel mobility, making them suitable for scaling into the sub-15 nm regime. Through full band Monte-Carlo, Poisson-Schrodinger and detailed BTBT simulations we show a dramatic reduction in BTBT and excellent electrostatic control of the channel, while maintaining very high drive currents in these highly scaled heterostructure DGFETs. Heterostructure MOSFETs with varying strained-Ge or SiGe thickness, Si cap thickness and Ge percentage were fabricated on bulk Si and SOI substrates. The ultra-thin (∼2 nm) strained-Ge channel heterostructure MOSFETs exhibited >4× mobility enhancements over bulk Si devices and >10× BTBT reduction over surface channel strained SiGe devices.