Impact of Post High-κ Deposition Anneal (PDA) and Post High-κ Capping Anneal (PCA) on the xBTI Performance in HfO2-Based FinFETs

Abstract

This paper mainly deals with the impact of high-κ/metal gate (HKMG) module on the xBTI performance in 16/14 nm FinFETs. Both Post high-κ Deposition Anneal (PDA) and Post high-κ Capping Anneal (PCA) are utilized to improve the reliability of HfO2-based FinFETs. The intrinsic correlation between annealing temperature and reliability improvement is systematically investigated. Achieved results show that for p-type FinFETs, both PDA and PCA can improve the Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) performance, due to the restoration of Si/interfacial layer (IL) interface trap states and IL regrowth. Moreover, NBTI performance is more sensitive to the variation of PDA temperature than PCA temperature. For n-type FinFETs, PDA instead of PCA can improve the Positive Bias Temperature Instability (PBTI) performance, because of oxygen vacancies passivation in the high-κ dielectric bulk and the IL regrowth. Especially, as the increase of PDA temperature, the improvement of PBTI is strengthened.