Process damage-free damascene metal gate technology for gentle integration of epitaxially grown high-k

This paper presents the first successful attempt to integrate crystalline high-k gate dielectrics into a virtually damage-free damascene metal gate process. Process details as well as initial electrical characterization results on fully functional gate Gd2O3 dielectric MOSFETs with equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) down to 1.9 nm are discussed and compared with devices with rare-earth gate dielectrics fabricated previously in a conventional CMOS process.