NBTI Immune First Plasma Nitridation SiON with Multiple Single-Wafer Tools for 45nm node Gate Dielectrics

Nitrogen-rich and thin SiON gate dielectrics process using first plasma nitridation approach has been examined for 45nm-node CMOS application. This new process provides T
_inv
1.8 nm with almost no degradation of the g
_m
and no shift of V
_th
, and especially exhibits the higher immunity of the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) even though the interfacial nitrogen concentration was observed to be higher than that of the conventional SiON process