AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Nanometer-scale Science and Technology Monday Sessions
       Session NS-MoM

Paper NS-MoM12
Raman Spectroscopy of Strained Silicon Structures for CMOS Technology

Monday, November 13, 2006, 11:40 am, Room 2016

Session: Nanoscale Imaging Techniques
Presenter: M. Hecker, AMD Saxony LLC & Co. KG Dresden, Germany
Authors: M. Hecker, AMD Saxony LLC & Co. KG Dresden, Germany
C. Georgi, AMD Saxony LLC & Co. KG Dresden, Germany
A. Mai, AMD Saxony LLC & Co. KG Dresden, Germany
L. Zhu, AMD Saxony LLC & Co. KG Dresden, Germany
E. Zschech, AMD Saxony LLC & Co. KG Dresden, Germany
Correspondent: Click to Email
Straining the active regions in silicon CMOS devices is one of the key contributors to increase device performance in present and future technology nodes. Since dedicated strain on the transistor level with opposite sign is required for NMOS and PMOS transistors, the need to measure strain on a local scale has become a challenge for metrology. Raman spectroscopy has the potential to obtain strain information non-destructively on the sub-µm scale, and therefore, this technique is evaluated for process monitoring. In this paper it will be shown for silicon-germanium thin films, how the problem of the interfering influence of strain and composition on Raman peak shifts can be overcome by measuring independent phonon modes. The obtained strain and composition parameters will be compared with data from other techniques. The lateral resolution of the method can be improved by application of an appropriate aperture close to the sample surface, or by apertureless approaches utilizing tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) at nanoparticles or metallized AFM tips brought into the laser beam. Results of both approaches are discussed and evaluated.