Physical and optoelectronic characterization of reactively sputtered molybdenum-silicon-nitride alloy metal gate electrodes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
With continued transistor scaling, work function tuning of metal gates has become important for advanced complementary-metal-oxide-silicon applications. The work function tuning of reactively sputtered MoxSiyNz (also referred to as MoSiN) gates has been studied through the incorporation of nitrogen. The nitrogen concentration in the MoSiN films was altered by controlling the gas flow ratio, RN=N2/(N2+Ar), during gate deposition. The sheet resistance (Rs) of blanket MoSiN films, measured using four-point resistance method, was found to increase as the gas flow ratio was varied from 10% to 40%. Current-voltage measurements confirmed excellent electrical stability of MoSiN/SiO2/p-Si gate stack for applied electric fields ranging up to 6 MV/cm. High frequency capacitance-voltage measurements were used to extract the MoSiN work function (Φm) using the relationship between the flatband voltage (VFB) and the oxide thickness (tox). The extracted MoSiN/SiO2 interfacial barrier heights, obtained through the internal photoemission of electrons, were used to corroborate the extracted values of MoSiN work function. The MoSiN work functions (Φm), extracted independently using both techniques, were consistent and were observed to decrease with increasing gas flow ratio [N2/(N2+Ar)]. Secondary ion mass spectrometry depth analysis revealed uniform distribution of nitrogen throughout the bulk MoSiN films, with no piling up at gate-dielectric interface. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy surface analysis suggested a steady increase in the Mo–N bonds, and therefore the total nitrogen concentration (from ∼20% to 32%), as the gas flow ratio is increased from 10% to 40%. A similar trend was observed in the nitrogen concentration (in percent), measured using Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, for these gate deposition conditions. These material characterization results demonstrate that the increase in nitrogen concentration in MoSiN films is consistent with the lowering of MoSiN work function. Moreover, the work function of reactively sputtered MoxSiyNz films was found to be variable over ∼0.3 eV by adjusting the nitrogen concentration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".