Characteristics and Microstructure of Co/Ni Composite Silicides on Polysilicon Substrates with Annealing Temperature

Silicides have been required to be below 40 nm-thick and to have low contact resistance without agglomeration at high silicidation temperature. We fabricated composite silicide layers on the wafers from Ni(20 nm)/Co(20 nm)/poly-Si(70 nm) structure by rapid thermal annealing of $700{\sim}1100^{\circ}C$ for 40 seconds. The sheet resistance, surface composition, cross-sectional microstructure, and surface roughness were investigated by a four point probe, a X-ray diffractometer, an Auger electron spectroscopy, a field emission scanning electron microscope, and a scanning probe microscope, respectively. The sheet resistance increased abruptly while thickness decreased as silicidation temperature increased. We propose that the fast metal diffusion along the silicon grain boundary lead to the poly silicon mixing and inversion. Our results imply that we may consider the serious thermal instability in designing and process for the sub-0.1 um CMOS devices.

폴리실리콘 기판 위에 형성된 코발트 니켈 복합실리사이드 박막의 열처리 온도에 따른 물성과 미세구조변화