No abstract

No abstract

IntroductionA high performance 0.20pm logic technology has been developed with six levels of planarized copper interconnects. 0.15pm transistors (Lg,,,=0.15+0.04pm) are optimized for 1.8V operation to provide high performance with low power-delay products and excellent reliability. Copper has been integrated into the back-end to provide low resistance interconnects. Critical layer pitches for the technology are summarized in Table 1 and enable fabrication of 7.6pm2 6T SRAM cells.Isolation and Transistors CMP planarized shallow trenches with good electrical isolation down to n+/p+ spacings of 0.5pm were fabricated (Fig. 1). Dual gate 0.15pm transistors with 35A physical gate oxides (accumulation t,,=39A measured at Vg=+l .SV) were formed using super steep retrograde channels, shallow extensions and halos, relatively deep source/drain regions and 1 OOnm nitride spacers. CoSi, was selectively formed on the polysilicon gates and source/drain regions with a nominal sheet resistance of 9Wsq. Rapid thermal processing was utilized as much as possible throughout the flow to minimize transient enhanced dopant diffusion.Fig. 2 shows a typical SEM cross-section of a NMOS transistor with a gate length of 0.15pm. Well delineated shallow S/D extensions and the deeper S/D junctions are clearly observed. The saturation drive currents for nominal gate length NMOS and PMOS devices are shown in Fig. 3 . The nominal drive currents are 630pNpm for NMOS and 230pA/ym for PMOS at 1.8V. The off-state leakage currents of these devices are well below the worst case leakage specification of 2nA/pm. The drain induced barrier lowering (DIBL) measured on NMOS and PMOS devices is plotted as a function of Leff in Fig. 4. Good short channel characteristics are maintained down to effective channel lengths of O.1ym. The Vt roll-off for N and P devices in the linear and saturation regions are shown in Fig. 5. The Vt's are 0.44V and -0.46V for Nch and Pch respectively, at a gate length of 0.15pm and the associated subthreshold slopes are less than 90mv/dec. The use of nitrided gate oxides was investigated due to their superior hot carrier reliability. Fig. 6 compares the degradation under hot carrier stress of nitrided oxides to thermal oxides and highlights the improved reliability of NO-annealed oxides. Peak Gms comparable to those from thermal oxides were obtained (Fig. 7). A further advantage afforded by nitrided gate dielectrics is its superior boron blocking properties, Increasing the poly silicon doping in the P+ gate to reduce poly depletion resulted in only a 88mV Vt shift in nitrided oxides (Fig. 8) compared to a 300mV Vt shift in thermal oxides. A significant reduction in the inversion to, is achieved with the higher gate doping, resulting in improved device characteristics. NMOS transistor design focused on minimizing defect enhanced dopant re-distribution such as TED. To this end, the effect of different source/drain implant energies on NMOS transistor performance is shown in Fig. 9. The lower energy implant results in a significantl...

We describe the development of a Proton Range Radiography system with an imaging area of 30 Â 30 cm 2 for two dimensional mapping of the integrated density in a target.Proton transmission radiographic images are produced by measuring, with a pair of position-sensitive detectors (GEM chambers), the direction of the protons transmitted through the patient and, with a stack of scintillators, the residual range of the protons leaving the patient. To match the data rate requirements of an in-beam diagnostic, a novel data acquisition system for the tracking detectors has been designed to operate at 1 MHz data flow. Laboratory tests exposing the GEM detector with high flux X-rays confirm the fast response of the new data acquisition system. Images of several phantoms have been recorded to demonstrate the GEM position accuracy.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the principle of proton range radiography.Abstract-A prototype 10x10cm active-area proton range telescope (PRT) has been built for use in quality assurance in hadrontherapy. The PRT uses two triple-GEM detectors for tracking and a stack of 3mm-thick plastic scintillators for the residual range determination. The PRT has been tested with proton beams at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland. Presentation of the results will be followed by a discussion of plans to build a larger range telescope having a 30cmx30cm active area.