Addressing materials and process-integration issues of NiSi silicide process using impurity engineering

As the industry approaches sub-100 nm technology nodes, the trend is to replace cobalt silicide with nickel monosilicide (NiSi) since the use of NiSi for contact metallization shows a number of technological advantages, including its line-width independent low resistivity, less Si consumption and low thermal budget for its formation, and compatibility with Si_1-xGe_x substrate technology. However, NiSi has not been considered as a serious candidate until recently mainly due to its poor morphological/thermal stability. Recent studies have shown that the morphological/thermal stability of NiSi can be enhanced substantially through the addition of a small amount of impurities, resulting in much improved silicided shallow junction integrity. In addition to improving the morphological/thermal stability, it has also been demonstrated that the addition of certain impurities, such as Ti, effectively reduces the sensitivity of NiSi formation to surface contaminants (e.g., residual interfacial oxide). This paper will present and discuss the details of these experimental results.