Electrical and reliability characteristics of 12-Å oxynitride gate dielectrics by different processing treatments

Various ultrathin oxynitride gate dielectrics of similar thickness (̃1.2 nm) fabricated by a combination of an in situ steam generated and remote plasma nitridation treatment (RPN), an RPN with rapid thermal NO annealing (RPN-NO), and an RPN with rapid thermal O2 annealing (RPN-O2) are reported in this paper. The RPN-NO gate dielectric films show superior interface properties including relatively high nitrogen concentration near the poly-Si/oxide interface and smooth interfaces, excellent electrical characteristics in terms of lower leakage current, better electron and hole channel mobility, higher drive current, and significantly improved reliability such as stress-induced leakage current, hot carrier injection, and negative bias temperature instability, compared to other gate dielectrics fabricated by different processes.