Modeling and simulation of the interplay between contact metallization and stress liner technologies for strained silicon

The interplay between the performance of nitride stress liner technologies and the contact metallization is studied based on computer simulations. Three dimensional models of transistor devices including the contacts have been created for the 32 nm and 45 nm technology nodes. The loss of stressor performance by opening the contact holes is studied systematically as function of the contact width. The use of strained contact metals to recover the performance loss due to metallization is demonstrated for nFET devices based on the simulation results.

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► 3D simulation model for the stress transfer from plasma enhanced nitride liner to the transistor channel in ULSI MOSFETs.
► Systematic analysis of stress liner performance degradation due to contact formation and its dependence on contact width and contact strain.
► Recovery of stress liner performance by using strained contact metals works well for the nFET devices.