Ultratech, Inc., a supplier of lithography, laser processing and inspection systems used to manufacture semiconductor devices and highbrightness LEDs (HB LEDs), as well as atomic layer deposition (ALD) systems, announced that its proprietary LXA nanosecond melt laser annealing technology enabled the world’s lowest contact resistivity for FinFETs in an R&D environment. In collaboration with multiple companies, this record achievement, as well as additional results, was presented in a paper at the 2016 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits held June 13-17, at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu, Hawaii.
In the development of today’s advanced CMOS logic FinFET devices, the electrical resistance at the contact junction (contact resistance) is widely recognized to play an increasingly significant role in overall device performance. In larger device nodes, the contact pads provide a relatively large area over which to transfer electrical current. But as devices continue to shrink, so does the available area to form the contact, creating an electrical current bottleneck that reduces the performance of the device and impacts battery life. In order to realize the desired benefits of the scaled transistor architecture, including improved device performance and greater battery life, it will be necessary to make significant advancements over the current process. One emerging solution is to improve the characteristics of the contact by modifying the material properties of the contact using a unique nanosecond melt laser annealing technology. Using Ultratech’s patent pending LXA melt laser annealing technology these researchers reported world record results in contact resistance.
Yun Wang, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Technologist, Laser Processing at Ultratech, said, “The great achievement in lowering the contact resistivity for FinFETs is that it provides faster on/off switching of the transistor using the same input voltage. Since the input voltage doesn’t need to be increased to provide faster transistor switching, a low supply voltage can be maintained, which saves battery life. The result is a FinFET transistor that operates very quickly at a lower voltage for faster performance and longer battery life. As we continue our R&D, we expect that Ultratech’s unique LXA nanosecond melt laser anneal technology will address a wide range of applications at the 7-nm and below nodes, and enable use of new materials anticipated at 5nm and below. We plan to use this record achievement as a benchmark to continue to improve our LXA technology.”
On Tuesday, June 14 at HAST, the paper by Hiroaki Niimi</span, Zuoguang Liu, Oleg Gluschenkov and others, titled, 'Sub-2×10-9 Ω‐cm2 N‐ and P-Contact Resistivity with Si:P and Ge:Ga Metastable Alloys for FinFET CMOS Technology' was presented during Session 7 – Contact Resistance Innovations for Sub‐10nm Scaling, at the 2016 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits.
Ultratech’s LXA Nanosecond Melt Laser Annealing Technology
Ultratech’s LXA technology is a proprietary technology for achieving nanosecond anneal utilizing a millisecond process in-situ with a nanosecond spike anneal to provide ultra-low thermal budget with added process flexibility for a wide range of materials and applications. The LXA technology is targeted for advanced junction formation, contact anneal, and multiple middle-of-line applications. As more exotic materials are used for 7nm and below devices, it is expected that Ultratech’s LXA nanosecond melt laser annealing technology will play a bigger role and include wider applications in the manufacture of leading-edge transistors.