The effect of deuterium passivation at different steps of CMOS processing on lifetime improvements of CMOS transistors

We have investigated the effect of deuterium sintering for reliability lifetime improvement of CMOS transistors with nitride sidewall spacers. SIMS measurements show that lifetime improvements of wafers with deuterium sintering at the Metal-1 and Metal-4 steps are directly related to the deuterium incorporation at the SiO/sub 2//Si interface.