SEMATECH announced today that it has received the Solid State Devices and Materials (SSDM) Best Paper Award for its work on reliability of high-k metal gates. The paper was presented at the International Conference on Solid State Devices and Materials in September 2007 by Chang Yong Kang, research engineer in the Front End Processes Division (FEP), of SEMATECH. The award ceremony took place on September 24 at the Tsukuba International Congress Center during the 2008 International Conference on Solid State Devices and Materials in Ibaraki, Japan.
The paper, entitled "nMOSFET Reliability Improvement attributed to the Interfacial Dipole formed by La Incorporation in HfO2," was co-authored by Paul Kirsch, Dawei Heh, Chadwin Young, Gennadi Bersuker, Byoung Hun Lee, Prassana Sivasubramani, Seung Chul Song, Rino Choi and Raj Jammy of SEMATECH, and Daniel Lichtenwalner, Jesse Jur, and Angus Kingon of North Carolina State University. The paper investigates the reliability of nMOSFETs with lanthanum-doped HfO2 dielectrics, whose device performance and voltage threshold are suitable for future technology nodes applications. The best paper is selected each year by the attendees and the program committee.
"It gives me great pleasure to congratulate our engineers for this prestigious recognition of their success as they continue to address the challenges of integrating new materials and device structures for functionality," said Raj Jammy, vice president of materials and emerging technologies at SEMATECH. "Quality work such as this paper - and those being presented by our technologists this year - is representative of SEMATECH's commitment to provide innovative and practical solutions for continued scaling of semiconductor technologies that can easily be incorporated in real-world manufacturing environments."
Additionally, at this year's conference, engineers from SEMATECH's FEP division delivered five technical papers describing new findings in advanced materials and device structures for continued scaling of semiconductor technologies. The papers outlined SEMATECH's leading-edge research related to high-k/metal gate (HKMG) materials and planar and non-planar CMOS technologies, including:
- Performance and Reliability of High-k/Metal Gate Stacks: Interfacial Layer Defects - examines high-pressure oxygen anneal (HPOA) and high-pressure hydrogen anneal (HPHA) processes applied to MOSFETs with metal electrode/high-k dielectric stacks.
- Mechanisms of Oxygen and Hydrogen Passivation using High Pressure Post-annealing Processes to Enhance the Performance of MOSFETs with Metal Gate/High-k Dielectric - examines results on the performance and reliability of the high-k/metal gate stack transistors and discuss physical properties of the defects affecting these characteristics.
- High Mobility SiGe Channel pMOSFETs Epitaxially Grown on Si (100) Substrates with HfSiO2 High-k Dielectric and Metal Gate - demonstrates high-mobility pMOSFETs on high quality epitaxial SiGe films selectively grown on Si substrates using a CVD system.
- Additive Process Induced Strain (APIS) Technology for Lg = 30nm Band-Edge High-k/Metal Gate nMOSFET - demonstrates that stressor spacer can be used to transfer stress into the channel for short channel devices in band-edge high-k/metal gate MOSFETs.
- Mitigation of CMOS Variability with Metal Gate - examines the variability of polysilicon gate compared to metal gate process.
The International Conference on Solid State Devices and Materials is an annual conference that provides a platform for technical experts to discuss the latest developments in solid-state devices and materials via presentations, seminars and plenary sessions. SEMATECH has been an active contributor to SSDM conferences since 2004. SSDM is one of many industry forums it uses to collaborate with scientists and engineers from corporations, universities and other research institutions, many of whom are research partners.