No abstract

We investigate the Ni–Si film silicidation process on 4H-SiC and Si substrates and compare the thermal stability of the films grown on each substrate. The Ni–Si films were subjected to rapid thermal annealing (RTA) in the temperature range 575 °C–975 °C for 90 s, and their thermal stability was characterized by in-situ temperature-dependent sheet resistance measurements at temperatures of 25 °C–550 °C. The sheet resistance of a 40 nm thick Ni film was observed to increase sharply above 330 °C in the Ni/Si (100) interface, but slightly decrease at approximately 480 °C in the Ni/4H-SiC interface. The thermal stability of the films was found to be significantly dependent on the RTA temperature. Thermally stable Ni–Si silicide films with excellent Ohmic properties (no hysteresis behavior) can be obtained on 4H-SiC substrates at RTA temperatures of 925 °C–975 °C and can used for application in MOSFET devices.

No abstract

We report a new quantum effect in metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), namely that the twodimensional (2-D) inversion charge falls substantially short of the classically predicted linear increase with gate voltage (V G ) in strong inversion. This effect is to be effectively quantified via the threshold voltage (V TH ) increasing with V G in the classical current-voltage (I-V) model and is called herein the threshold voltage creep (VTH-creep). In 0.18 m MOSFET, for example, VTH-creep amounts to 58% of the V TH at the device turn-on point, when V G is swept from 0.5 to 2 V. Additionally, the VTHcreep significantly affects the extraction of effective mobility ( eff ) from the I-V data. VTH-creep is shown a key to the accurate I-V modeling and constitutes one of the most clearly observed quantum phenomena in MOSFET.

Synchrotron radiation transmission X-ray microscopy (SRTXM) was applied for visualization of the interfacial layer in bonded wafer pairs. The X-ray energy of 6.54 keV with a monitoring window was utilized to enhance a resolution of transmission X-ray microscopy (TXM). The monitoring window was designed a locally uncovered area of the bonded wafer pairs to make the thickness of bonded wafers less than 200 μm. The experimental results showed that the technique has sub-micron meter resolution. Also this technique can improve the resolution of the synchrotron X-ray for nanoelectronics application.