Nitride-sandwiched-oxide gate insulator for low power CMOS

Abstract

A gate insulator with a novel nitride-sandwiched oxide (NSO) structure was formed by successive NO and plasma nitridation steps. This approach reduced the leakage current to 15% of the oxide value, while enhancing the electron mobility by 15%. NSO also has high dielectric reliability and almost completely blocks B penetration in a PMOS device. Our experiments have confirmed that NSO is a very promising technology for forming gate insulators in low-power CMOS devices in the 100-nm to 80-nm node.