Enhanced nitrogen plasma immersion passivation method for high-K/Ge stack formation

In this paper, an enhanced Ge surface passivation method by nitrogen plasma immersion with adding RIE power is presented and experimentally demonstrated. With the acceleration effect resulting from electric field induced by proper RIE power, more nitrogen plasma will drift to Ge surface to passivate the dangling bonds. It is shown that nitrogen plasma immersion with RIE power is efficient in suppressing Ge suboxide growth during high-K dielectric deposition, reducing interface states and improving the C-V characteristic of both p-MOS and n-MOS capacitors in terms of flat-band voltage and hysteresis.