Supersaturated and metastable silicon-carbon (Si:C) source/drain (S/D) stressors produced by laser anneal allow strain engineering for device performance enhancement. We report the use of a cluster-carbon (normalC7normalH7+) implant and pulsed excimer laser-induced epitaxial crystallization technique to form embedded Si:C S/D stressors with substitutional carbon concentration Csub of ∼1.1% . Transmission electron microscopy, secondary-ion mass spectrometry, and high resolution X-ray diffraction is used to characterize the structure and composition. n-field effect transistors (FETs) integrated with embedded Si:C S/D stressors formed using the normalC7normalH7+ implant and pulsed laser anneal technique demonstrate improvement in Ioff-IDSAT performance of ∼16% over control n-FETs formed without carbon implant at an Ioff=1×10−7A∕μm . Cluster–Carbon implant and laser anneal presented in this work is a simple and cost-effective approach to boost IDSAT performance and is a promising option for strain-engineering in advanced technology nodes.

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We investigated Si:C S/D stressors having a retrograde carbon profile formed by carbon ion implantation and solid phase epitaxy (SPE). The retrograde carbon profile features a 30-nm-thick buried silicon carbon (Si:C) layer that is spatially decoupled from a 10-nm-thick surface layer with high phosphorus concentration. Retrograde carbon profile can increase the dopant activation rate in the Si:C S/D stressors and achieves more than 30% reduction of sheet resistance (R s ) when SPE temperature is lower than 800 • C. Samples with retrograde carbon profile have a lower R s for a given substitutional carbon concentration compared to the uniform carbon profile samples. Nickel monosilicide (NiSi) formed on Si:C S/D with a retrograde carbon profile has a R s which ∼10% lower than that formed on Si:C with uniform C profile.