Deuterium post metal annealing of MOSFETs for improved hot carrier reliability

Summary form only given. Low temperature post-metallization anneals in hydrogen ambients are critical to CMOS fabrication technologies in reducing Si/SiO/sub 2/ interface trap charge densities by hydrogen passivation. While this process improves device function by passivating the otherwise electrically active interface traps, it sets the stage for subsequent hot electron degradation. We have recently demonstrated an alternative process where the anneal ambient is deuterium. It was shown that the hot carrier reliability (lifetime) of NMOS transistors annealed in a deuterium ambient increases by an order of magnitude compared with those devices annealed in hydrogen. The idea of using deuterium instead of hydrogen was in part inspired by experiments in which a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) was used to stimulate the desorption of hydrogen or deuterium from Si