Improvement of Thermal Stability of Nickel Silicide Using Co-sputtering of Ni and Ti for Nano-Scale CMOS Technology

Abstract

In this paper, a thermally stable nickel silicide technology using the co-sputtering of nickel and titanium atoms capped with TiN layer is proposed for nano-scale metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) applications. The effects of the incorporation of titanium ingredient in the co-sputtered Ni layer are characterized as a function of Ti sputtering power. The difference between the one-step rapid thermal process (RTP) and two-step RTP for the silicidation process has also been studied. It is shown that a certain proportion of titanium incorporation with two-step RTP has the best thermal stability for this structure.