Nitrogen plasma passivation （NPP） on （111） germanium （Ge） was studied in terms of the interface trap density, roughness, and interfacial layer thickness using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition （PECVD）. The results show that NPP not only reduces the interface states, but also improves the surface roughness of Ge, which is beneficial for suppressing the channel scattering at both low and high field regions of Ge MOSFETs. However, the interracial layer thickness is also increased by the NPP treatment, which will impact the equivalent oxide thickness （EOT） scaling and thus degrade the device performance gain from the improvement of the surface morphology and the interface passivation. To obtain better device performance of Ge MOSFETs, suppressing the interfacial layer regrowth as well as a trade-off with reducing the interface states and roughness should be considered carefully when using the NPP process.
An extensive and complete experimental investigation with a full layout design of the channel direction was carried out for the first time to clarify the orientation dependence of germanium p-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors （PMOSFETs）. By comparison of gate trans-conductance, drive current, and hole mobility, we found that the performance trend with the substrate orientation for Ge PMOSFET is （110）〉（111） ~ （100）, and the best channel direction is （110）/[110]. Moreover, the （110） device performance was found to be easily degraded as the channel direction got off from the [ 110] orientation, while （100） and （111） devices exhibited less channel orientation dependence. This experimental result shows good matching with the simulation reports to give a credible and significant guidance for Ge PMOSFET design.
In this paper, oxidation of Ge surface by N2O plasma is presented and experimentally demonstrated. Results show that 1.0-nm GeO2 is achieved after 120-s N20 plasma oxidation at 300 ℃. The GeO2/Ge interface is atomically smooth. The interface state density of Ge surface after N20 plasma passivation is about - 3 × 1011 cm-2.eV-1. With GeO2 passivation, the hysteresis of metal-oxide-semiconductor （MOS） capacitor with A1203 serving as gate dielectric is reduced to - 50 mV, compared with - 130 mV of the untreated one. The Fermi-level at GeO2/Ge interface is unpinned, and the surface potential is effectively modulated by the gate voltage.
This paper reports that the Schottky barrier height modulation of NiSi/n-Si is experimentally investigated by adopting a novel silicide-as-diffusion-source technique, which avoids the damage to the NiSi/Si interface induced from the conventional dopant segregation method. In addition, the impact of post-BF2 implantation after silicidation on the surface morphology of Ni silicides is also illustrated. The thermal stability of Ni silicides can be improved by silicide- as-diffusion-source technique. Besides, the electron Schottky barrier height is successfully modulated by 0.11 eV at a boron dose of 1015 cm-2 in comparison with the non-implanted samples. The change of barrier height is not attributed to the phase change of silicide films but due to the boron pile-up at the interface of NiSi and Si substrate which causes the upward bending of conducting band. The results demonstrate the feasibility of novel silicide-as-diffusion-source technique for the fabrication of Schottky source/drain Si MOS devices.
