Performance Improvement for Ge FinFET CMOS Inverter With Supercritical Fluid Treatment

• Published in: IEEE electron device letters Vol. 43; no. 6; pp. 838 - 841
• Main Authors: Ruan, Dun-Bao, Chang-Liao, Kuei-Shu, Liu, Chih-Wei, Lee, Yao-Jen, Chien, Yu-Hsuan, Kuo, Bo-Lien, Chiu, Yu-Chuan, Gan, Kai-Jhih, Hsu, Chih-Chieh, Liu, Po-Tsun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.06.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: CMOS; CMOS inverter; FinFETs; Ge FinFET; Germanium; Inverters; Logic gates; Oxidation; oxidation state; plasma post-oxidation; Plasmas; supercritical fluid treatment; Supercritical fluids; Voltage; Voltage gain
• ISSN: 0741-3106; 1558-0563
• DOI: 10.1109/LED.2022.3167952

Performance improvement on Ge nFinFET, pFinFET and CMOS inverter can be achieved by using a novel low temperature damage-free supercritical phase fluid (SCF) treatment. Thanks to effective reduction of unstable oxidation states, oxygen vacancies and interface traps, higher on-off current ratios (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{8}\times {10}^{{5}} </tex-math></inline-formula> for pFinFET and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{3.3}\times {10}^{{5}} </tex-math></inline-formula> for nFinFET), lower S.S. (72 mV/dec), higher on current (>45% improvement) and better reliability in Ge FinFETs are achieved with a SCF treatment as compared with a remote plasma post-oxidation (PPO) one. Besides, a higher voltage gain (88 V/V) of Ge FinFET CMOS inverter is obtained with a SCF treatment in comparison with a remote PPO one.