Palladium incorporated nickel silicide for a cost effective alternative salicide technology for scaled CMOS

Incorporation of platinum (Pt) into nickel silicide (NiSi) improves the reliability and thermal stability of electrodes in Si MOSFETs. Increasing the Pt content is desirable for further scaled CMOS, but incorporation of more Pt would tremendously increase the material cost. In addition, since Pt is one of the key materials for eco-technology such as catalyst for exhaust absorption and so on, reduction of the use of Pt whose amount is limited is essential for ecology. Recently palladium (Pd), which has similar chemical properties to those of Pt, has been attracting interest as a substitute of Pt. Several works have pointed out that NiPdSi bulk film has superior thermal stability to NiSi. However, its potentiality in fully integrated CMOS devices has not been studied yet. In this work, we investigate the detailed properties of NiPdSi on fully integrated CMOS structures fabricated with the advanced process technology as a candidate of the alternative silicide material for NiPtSi.