• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2008

We fabricated thermally-evaporated 10 nm-Ni/30 nm and 70 nm Poly-Si/200 nm-$SiO_2/Si$ structures to investigate the thermal stability of nickel silicides formed by rapid thermal annealing(RTA) of the temperature of $300{\sim}1100^{\circ}C$ for 40 seconds. We employed for a four-point tester, field emission scanning electron microscope(FE-SEM), transmission electron microscope(TEM), high resolution X-ray diffraction(HRIXRD), and scanning probe microscope(SPM) in order to examine the sheet resistance, in-plane microstructure, cross-sectional microstructure evolution, phase transformation, and surface roughness, respectively. The silicide on 30 nm polysilicon substrate was stable at temperature up to $900^{\circ}C$, while the one on 70 nm substrate showed the conventional $NiSi_2$ transformation temperature of $700^{\circ}C$. The HRXRD result also supported the existence of NiSi-phase up to $900^{\circ}C$ for the Ni silicide on the 30 nm polysilicon substrate. FE-SEM and TEM confirmed that 40 nm thick uniform silicide layer and island-like agglomerated silicide phase of $1{\mu}m$ pitch without residual polysilicon were formed on 30 nm polysilicon substrate at $700^{\circ}C\;and\;1000^{\circ}C$, respectively. All silicides were nonuniform and formed on top of the residual polysilicon for 70 nm polysilicon substrates. Through SPM analysis, we confirmed the surface roughness was below 17 nm, which implied the advantage on FUSI gate of CMOS process. Our results imply that we may tune the thermal stability of nickel monosilicide by reducing the height of polysilicon gate.