Improvement of junction leakage of nickel silicided junction by a Ti-capping layer

A novel NiSi process with a thin Ti-cap layer is proposed, for the first time, to improve the leakage problem of Ni-silicided junction. The Ti-cap samples exhibit a very low leakage current density about 1/spl times/10/sup -9/ A/cm/sup 2/ after 600/spl deg/C annealing, which is one order of magnitude reduction comparing with uncapped samples. From Auger analyzes, it is found that this significant improvement results from suppression of the oxidation of the Ni-silicide during the thermal annealing process.