High performance 40 nm nMOSFETs with HfO 2 gate dielectric and polysilicon damascene gate

We report on 40 nm nMOS transistors with HfO/sub 2/ dielectric and polySi gate integrated into a damascene structure. We fabricated HfO/sub 2/ ALD layers with EOT down to 15 /spl Aring/, exhibiting leakage current more than two decades lower than SiO/sub 2/. Small mobility degradation on 2 nm EOT nMOSFETs was observed leading to the best performances (Ion= 680 /spl mu/A//spl mu/m @ Ioff=230 nA//spl mu/m) ever obtained with HfO/sub 2/ and polySi electrodes.