Research progress of high mobility germanium based metal oxide semiconductor devices

Germanium based metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) device has been a research hotspot and considered as a potential candidate for future complementary MOS (CMOS) technology due to its high and symmetric carrier mobility. However, the poor quality of gate dielectric/channel interface significantly restricts the performances of germanium based MOS devices. Besides, the solid-solubility and activation concentration of dopants in Ge are both quite low, and the dopants diffuse fast in Ge, which makes it difficult to achieve ultra-shallow junction with high dopant concentration, especially for Ge NMOS devices.To solve these problems, different techniques are proposed and overviewed. The proposed nitrogen-plasma-passivation method can effectively suppress the regrowth of germanium sub-oxide and reduce the interface state density. Thus the performance of the fabricated Ge NMOS device is significantly improved. To enhance the n-type dopant activation in Ge, the multiple implantation technique and the multiple annealing technique are proposed. High electrical activation over 1 1020 cm-3 is achieved, and the corresponding contact resistivity is reduced to 3.8 10-7 cm2. Besides, the implantation after germanide (IAG) technique is first proposed to modulate the Schottky barrier height (SBH). The record-low electron SBH of 0.10 eV is obtained by IAG technique, and the optimized process window is given. In addition, the poor thermal stability of NiGe restricts the further improvement in performance of Ge MOS device. P and Sb co-implantation technique and novel ammonium fluoride pretreatment method are proposed to improve the thermal stability of NiGe. The electrical characteristic of NiGe/Ge diode is also improved simultaneously. The results provide the guidelines for further enhancing the performances of germanium-based MOS devices.