Charge pumping technique for the evaluation of plasma induced edge damage in shallow S/D extension thin gate oxide NMOSFETs

Plasma etching of polysilicon in an MOS device during the gate definition induces the plasma edge damage at the corner of the gate. In this paper, we address the interaction between edge damage, antenna effect and hot carrier degradation and their impact on device reliability. An accurate charge pumping profiling technique has been proposed to characterize the resulting damage. A three-phase edge damage process has been proposed. It is shown that interface trap degradation is the dominant impact of the plasma induced edge damage. The edge damage will enhance the short channel device HC degradation under long-term circuit operation.