Improved Air Spacer Co-Integrated with Self-Aligned Contact (SAC) and Contact Over Active Gate (COAG) for Highly Scaled CMOS Technology

We report an improved air spacer that is successfully co-integrated on FinFET transistors with Self-Aligned Contacts (SAC) and Contacts Over Active Gate (COAG). The new integration scheme enables air spacer formation agnostic to the underlying transistor architecture, thus paving the way for a seamless adoption of air spacer in FinFET and Gate-All-Around (GAA) technologies. A reduction in effective capacitance $(C_{\mathrm{eff}})$ by 15% is experimentally demonstrated. The power/performance benefits achieved by the new air spacer exceeds the benefits of scaling FinFET from 7nm node to 5nm node.