Powder characterization

Abstract

Rapid advances in the semiconductor industry have led to the proliferation of electric devices and information technology (IT). Integrated circuits(IC) based upon silicon MOSFET's have been used in virtually every electronic device produced today. The competitiveness of this huge market urges an increased device performance with lower cost. Over the past three decades, it is fulfilled by reducing transistor gate lengths and oxide thickness with each new generation of manufacturing technology.The leading edge CMOS technology is currently at the 45nm node with physical gate length at 18 nm and an equivalent gate oxide thickness (EOT) of 0.9 nm. However, as iii the device is miniaturized into the nanometer-scale regime nowadays, some challenges abound. Some challenges are new, some are just getting tougher and most of them will continue to become even more difficult to deal with for future generations. It is the world-wide effort to meet these challenges for sustaining the rapid growth of the industry. In this thesis, we will address a few of these challenges and offer some new approaches to get around them. Specifically, we introduce a new measurement technique to solve the precision problem in C-V measurement based on Time domain Reflectrometry(TDR). We also use the combination of experiment and theory to resolve the defect depth-profiling ambiguity associated with charge pumping measurement. Moreover, we find a new mode in transistor degradation that will become much more serious as the transistor size shrinks further. All these results represent a major and important advance which is also timely to the IC industry. iv Acknowledgements I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge the people who have made this thesis proposal possible. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Professor Kin.P. Cheung, who has introduced me to the world of research. It is an intellectually stimulating as well as exciting field. His endless enthusiasm and scientific knowledge continues to be a great inspiration to me. And I deeply appreciate the guidance and support he has given me over the years. In addition, I am very grateful for the collaborative opportunities I have with National Institutes of Standard and Technology (NIST). In particular, I must thank Dr. John Suehle, who is also one of my thesis committee members, for his kindness and help to provide me the facilities to do the NBTI experiment. Also the discussion with him has greatly increased the scope and importance of my thesis. I would also like to thank other committee members, those are, Dr.Lu, Dr.Sheng, for their continued guidance and encouragement. At the end, I am grateful to all my friends from Rutgers University, for being the surrogate family during the many years I stayed here and for their continued moral support. Finally, I am forever indebted to my father Dr. Wenbiao Wang , my mother Yunhong Lv and my wife Qiankun Sun for their understanding, endless patience and encouragement when it was most required.