Tuning nickel silicide properties using a lamp based RTA, a heat conduction based RTA or a furnace anneal

For Ni silicidation a lamp based anneal, a furnace anneal and a heater based anneal have been used. Ni silicidation on unstructured Si wafers is characterized by means of sheet resistance, XRD and AES. In the second part of this paper the characterization is extended to product wafers using sheet resistance measurements, transistor performance and product yield to investigate the suitability of the different techniques and processes. We will show that all of the above techniques are suitable for NiSi formation if the thermal budget of the 1st anneal step is sufficient to react enough Ni to Ni rich silicide phases or NiSi. A 2nd anneal step after sequential Ni strip has been found to be of minor importance as the backend processing will finish the NiSi formation in case of Nickel rich phases being left after the Ni 1st anneal step. In the direct comparison of NiSi vs. CoSi the former showed equivalent or better yield and performance.