Enhanced strain effects in 25-nm gate-length thin-body nMOSFETs with silicon-carbon source/drain and tensile-stress liner

We report the demonstration of 25-nm gate-length L-G strained nMOSFETs featuring the silicon-carbon source and drain (Si1-yCyS/D) regions and a thin-body thickness T-body of similar to 18 nm. This is also the smallest reported planar nMOSFET with the Si1-yCyS/D stressors. Strain-induced mobility enhancement due to the Si1-yCyS/D leads to a significant drive-current I-Dsat enhancement of 52% over the control transistor. Furthermore, the integration of tensile-stress SiN etch stop layer and Si1-yCyS/D extends the I-Dsat enhancement to 67%. The performance enhancement was achieved for the devices with similar subthreshold swing and drain-induced barrier lowering. The Si1-yCyS/D technology and its combination with the existing strained-silicon techniques are promising for the future high-performance CMOS applications.