SiGe islands are used to induce tensile strain in the Si channel of Field Effect Transistors to achieve larger transconductance and higher current driveabilities. We report on x-ray diffraction experiments on a single fully-processed and functional device with a TiN+Al gate stack and source, gate, and drain contacts in place. The strain fields in the Si channel were explored using an x-ray beam focused to 400 nm diameter combined with finite element simulations. A maximum in-plane tensile strain of about 1% in the Si channel was found, which is by a factor of three to four higher than achievable for dislocation-free tensile strained Si in state-of-the-art devices.
@article{arxiv.1011.3978,
title = {Strain determination in the Si channel above a single SiGe island inside a field effect transistor using nanobeam x-ray diffraction},
author = {N. Hrauda and J. J. Zhang and E. Wintersberger and T. Etzelstorfer and J. Stangl and D. Carbone and C. Biasotto and V. Jovanovic and L. K. Nanver and J. Moers and D. Grützmacher and G. Bauer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.3978},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
The following article has been submitted to Applied Physics Letters. After it is published, it will be found at http://apl.aip.org/