Parasitic Resistance Reduction Strategies for Advanced CMOS FinFETs Beyond 7nm

This work thoroughly investigates the external parasitic resistance in advanced FinFET technology. The optimization of the parasitic resistance is systematically examined in terms of 1) source/drain epi resistance, 2) contact resistance and 3) middle of line metal stud resistance. Various resistance reduction knobs have been experimentally explored in these three aspects and low contact resistivity of $1\times 10^{-9}$ and $7\times 10^{-10} \Omega\cdot \text{cm}^{2}$ have been demonstrated on transistor level for NFET and PFET. By combining all the parasitic resistance reduction strategies, more than 70% and 60% reductions [1] in external parasitic resistance have been realized on NFET and PFET, respectively.