Channel hot-electron and hot-hole improvement in Al and Cu multilevel metal CMOS using deuterated anneals and passivating films

This paper reports up to 100/spl times/ improvement in hot-electron lifetime in high-performance CMOS, without impacting process cycle time or thermal budget. This was achieved by combining deuterated-film processing with standard pre-metal and post-metal anneals in deuterated forming gas. CMOS transistors, fabricated in a single and dual-oxide process, were studied. The effects of additional back-end-of-line processing on multilevel metal processes were evaluated. We also demonstrate for the first time the effect of incorporating deuterated processing on CMOS devices integrated with copper interconnects where lower temperature/time post-metal anneals are expected.