To meet the market demands for higher performance LSIs, traditional scaling has been aggressively pursued and has enjoyed great success over the 0.1-μm generations. To maintain continued growth of CMOS performance beyond the 0.1-μm generation, key issues originating from traditional scaling are addressed from the viewpoint of the doping processes (channel engineering, high-activation, and gate- electrode structure) in this paper.

To meet the acceleration in gate-length miniaturization, short-channel effects must be suppressed at a low threshold voltage by using aggressive channel engineering. A channel-impurity profile must be optimized two-dimensionally, not uniformly or one-dimensionally. Channel engineering using tilted-channel implantation (TCI) with Indium is demonstrated.

Traditional scaling results in large variations of threshold voltage due to the statistical-impurity variation in a channel region. We studied the effect of the above channel engineering on threshold voltage fluctuation caused by a statistical- dopant variation by measurement and simulation. It is reported that the two-dimensionally optimized channel profile enhances threshold-voltage fluctuation even if the implantation process variation is negligible.

As CMOS device scales, reduction of parasitic resistance becomes very important for a high performance operation. Resistance at extension egde and contact resistance at silicide-Si interface are dominant factors.The traditional approach is to use a higher RTA temperature and a shorter RTA time. The ultimate RTA is laser annealing. We will demonstrate the laser annealing process with an ultra-low contact resistance of 4 × 10−8 Ω-cm2.

By integrating the above technologies, ultra-thin gate insulators, and reduction in gate to source/drain overlap length, we can establish front-end process for sub-0.1 μm generations.