Abstract
Non-planar Fin Field Effect Transistors (FinFET) are already present in modern devices. The evolution from the well-established 2D planar technology to the design of 3D nanostructures rose new fabrication processes, but a technique capable of full characterization, particularly their dopant distribution, in a representative (high statistics) way is still lacking. Here we propose a methodology based on Medium Energy Ion Scattering (MEIS) to address this query, allowing structural and compositional quantification of advanced 3D FinFET devices with nanometer spatial resolution. When ions are backscattered, their energy losses unfold the chemistry of the different 3D compounds present in the structure. The FinFET periodicity generates oscillatory features as a function of backscattered ion energy and, in fact, these features allow a complete description of the device dimensions. Additionally, each measurement is performed over more than thousand structures, being highly representative in a statistical meaning. Finally, independent measurements using electron microscopy corroborate the proposed methodology.
Highlights
The aggressive roadmap of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors technology has been driving for decades the principal advances in nanotechnology fabrication methods, tools and characterization, from which innumerous other science fields benefit today
At the moment, the task relies fundamentally on Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) based techniques. This implies into special care on artifacts of sample preparation and, as well as for Atom Probe Tomography (APT), intrinsic limited statistics
As a complementary technique to address some of these issues, here, we extend the capabilities of Medium Energy Ion Scattering (MEIS) to develop a non-destructive method for the structural characterization of 3D electronic nanostructures
Summary
The aggressive roadmap of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors technology has been driving for decades the principal advances in nanotechnology fabrication methods, tools and characterization, from which innumerous other science fields benefit today. At the moment, the task relies fundamentally on Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) based techniques. This implies into special care on artifacts of sample preparation and, as well as for APT, intrinsic limited statistics. As a complementary technique to address some of these issues, here, we extend the capabilities of Medium Energy Ion Scattering (MEIS) to develop a non-destructive method for the structural characterization of 3D electronic nanostructures. While the energy loss of ions provides the information on the chemistry of the different 3D components of the structure, we show that the periodicity of the fin array generates oscillatory features as a function of the ion energy and the detection angle, allowing the determination of height, width and average interdistance between fins (fin-pitch) i.e. a full compositional and dimensional reconstruction. The structure is reconstructed by data simulation using the PowerMEIS code[8]
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