Study of nitridation plasma for ultra-thin gate dielectrics of 65 nm technology node and beyond

In the present paper, to find the effective optimization of operation parameters in manufacturing, the gate dielectric nitridation in high-density plasma has been systematically studied by both theoretical and experimental methods. The experimental data are validated against the modeling results. Some plasma parameter correlation has been established to provide a guideline to optimize the nitridation profile in gate dielectric layer across wafer. It paves a way to make further improvement of device performance.