Semiconductor Device Performance Improvement
AssigneeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
InventorsHongfa LUAN, Huicheng CHANG, Cheng-Po CHAU, Wen-Yu KU, Yi-Fan CHEN, Chun-Yen PENG
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Abstract
Embodiment described herein provide a thermal treatment process following a high-pressure anneal process to keep hydrogen at an interface between a channel region and a gate dielectric layer in a field effect transistor while removing hydrogen from the bulk portion of the gate dielectric layer. The thermal treatment process can reduce the amount of threshold voltage shift caused by a high-pressure anneal. The high-pressure anneal and the thermal treatment process may be performed any time after formation of the gate dielectric layer, thus, causing no disruption to the existing process flow.
Claims20
A structure comprising:
- an active area on a substrate, the active area having a channel region;
- a gate structure over the channel region of the active area, wherein the gate structure includes:
- an interfacial layer over the active area;
- a conformal dielectric layer over the interfacial layer;
- and
- a gate electrode layer over the interfacial layer;
- and
- wherein a ratio of a peak concentration of hydrogen in the interfacial layer to a peak concentration of hydrogen in the conformal dielectric layer is in a range from about 0.1 to about 5.
A method comprising:
- performing a high-pressure anneal process to a structure having a conformal dielectric layer formed over a channel region of an active area to introduce hydrogen to an interface between the conformal dielectric layer and the channel region;
- and
- after performing the high-pressure anneal process, performing a post-anneal treatment to reduce hydrogen in the conformal dielectric layer.
A method, comprising:
- forming a gate structure over a channel region of an active area, wherein the gate structure includes a conformal dielectric layer over the active area;
- annealing the gate structure at a first pressure to introduce hydrogen to an interface between the conformal dielectric layer and the channel region;
- and
- performing a post-anneal treatment on the gate structure at a second pressure to reduce hydrogen in the conformal dielectric layer, wherein the first pressure is higher than the second pressure.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.