Two silicon nitride technologies for post-SiO2 MOSFET gate dielectric

P-MOSFETs with 14 Angstrom equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) were fabricated using both JVD Si3N4 and RTCVD Si3N4/SiOxNy gate dielectric technologies. With gate length down to 80 nm, the two technologies produced very similar device performances, such as drive current and gate tunneling current. The low gate leakage current, good device characteristics and compatibility wit h conventional CMOS processing technology make both nitride gate dielectric s attractive candidates for post-SiO2 scaling. The fact that two significan tly different technologies produced identical results suggests that the pro cess window should be quite large.