Gate Dielectrics for High Performance and Low Power CMOS SoC Applications

This paper investigates the use of plasma nitridation (PN) for fabricating 1.5 and 2 nm gate dielectrics for CMOS system-on-a-chip (SoC) applications. The separate optimisation of PN recipes for high performance (HP, 1.5 nm) and low power (LP, 2 nm) CMOS devices results in good device performance with excellent device lifetime and low 1/f noise. For tripleoxide SoC applications, the use of a common PN step for both HP and LP yields gate dielectrics with excellent breakdown characteristics and devices with the required off-state leakage control.