Anomalous Electron Mobility in Extremely-Thin SOI (ETSOI) Diffusion Layers with SOI
Thickness of Less Than 10 nm and High Doping Concentration of Greater Than 1×10
18
cm
-3
Naotoshi Kadotani
1
, Tsunaki Takahashi
1
, Kunro Chen
1
, Tetsuo Kodera
2
, Shunri Oda
2
, and Ken Uchida
1,3
Department of Physical Electronics
1
& Quantum Nanoelectronics Research Center
2
, Tokyo Institute of Technology,
2-12-1-S9-12, Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan
PRESTO
3
, Japan Science and Technology Agency, 4-1-8 Honcho, Kawaguchi, Saitama, Japan
Phone/Facsimile: +81-3-5734-3854, E-mail: {kadotani, uchidak}@ssn.pe.titech.ac.jp
Abstract
Carrier transport in heavily doped extremely thin sili-
con-on-insulator (ETSOI) diffusion layers with SOI thickness
of less than 10 nm was thoroughly studied. We found that
electron mobility (μ
e
) in heavily doped ETSOI diffusion layer
is totally different from μ
e
in heavily doped bulk Si. In ET-
SOI diffusion layers with SOI thickness ranging from 5 nm to
10 nm μ
e
is enhanced, compared with μ
e
in heavily doped
bulk Si. This enhancement is caused by the reduced number
of ions which interact with carriers in ETSOI. On the other
hand, in ETSOI with SOI thickness of less than 2 nm μ
e
is
degraded, compared with μ
e
in heavily doped bulk Si. The
degradation is primary due to the scattering induced by SOI
thickness fluctuations. μ
e
in heavily doped ETSOI with SOI
thickness of less than 2 nm is further decreased as doping
concentration increases, which results from the enhanced po-
tential fluctuations by Coulomb potentials made by randomly
distributed ions.
Introduction
MOSFETs fabricated on extremely thin SOI layer (ET-
SOI) have been attracted growing interests, because of their
immunity to short channel effects (SCE) [1-3]. Previous
works on ETSOI devices have revealed that quantum me-
chanical (QM) effects greatly influence carrier transport in
ETSOI channel [3]. However, few studies have been reported
on carrier transport in heavily doped ETSOI diffusion layers.
Since parasitic resistance in source/drain diffusion layers is a
serious issue in scaled MOSFETs, the understanding on car-
rier transport in heavily doped ETSOI diffusion layer is in-
dispensable for designing advanced ETSOI devices as well as
3D MOSFETs [4-6] (Fig. 1).
This paper is the first to report carrier transport in heavily
doped ETSOI diffusion layers. The electron mobility (μ
e
) in
heavily doped ETSOI diffusion layers was thoroughly studied
for various SOI thicknesses (T
SOI
). We found that μ
e
in heav-
ily doped ETSOI diffusion layers is totally different from μ
e
in heavily doped bulk Si. We observed that μ
e
is enhanced in
heavily doped ETSOI when T
SOI
ranges from 5 nm to 10 nm,
whereas μ
e
degrades as dopant concentration increases in
heavily doped ETSOI with T
SOI
of 2 nm.
Doping to ETSOI Layer & Device Structure
The fabrication of heavily doped ETSOI is not an easy
task, because damages in crystal quality caused by high
energy ion implantations (I/I) cannot be completely recovered
in ETSOI. In order to avoid these damages during I/I, phos-
phorous (P) ions were implanted at initial stage (the SOI
thickness is approximately 60 nm). The high-temperature
annealing (1000 °C, 30 min) in N
2
ambient was then per-
formed in order to activate phosphorous ions and to recover
crystal quality of SOI. The SOIs were then thinned down to
less-than-10-nm scale by repeating thermal oxidation &
thermal oxide striping processes by HF solutions (Fig. 2).
Fig.3 shows the SIMS profile of phosphorous in thick SOI
and ETSOI, indicating ETSOI has almost the same phos-
phorous concentration as that of thick SOI in spite of the re-
peated thermal oxidation process. Fig.4 shows the ESR spec-
trums of heavily doped ETSOI, showing that phosphorous
ions were successfully activated even in ETSOI with T
SOI
of
less than 3 nm. It is thus confirmed that we successfully fa-
bricated less-than-3-nm ETSOI with the active donor con-
centration (N
D
+
) of greater than 1x10
19
cm
-3
.
In order to evaluate the electron density (N
s
) as well as Hall
mobility (μ
H
) for devices with various T
SOI
’s, the Hall bar
structure with the poly-Si gate electrode is employed (Fig. 5).
The gate electrode enables us to measure C-V characteristics
of the devices. From C-V characteristics, the flat band voltage
(V
FB
) is extracted (Fig. 6). Under the flat band condition, it is
possible to investigate carrier transport in neither surface ac-
cumulation nor inversion layers but heavily doped diffusion
layers in ETSOI body.
μ
e
Enhancement: Reduced Coulomb Scattering in ETSOI
μ
e
in heavily doped 50-nm-thick (bulk-like) SOI diffusion
layers was firstly studied. In our experiments, Hall mobility
(μ
H
) and surface electron density (N
s
) are evaluated through
the Hall effects. Then, μ
H
is transformed to the effective mo-
bility (μ
eff
) using the Hall factor (γ); μ
eff
=μ
H
/γ [8]. Fig. 7
shows the relationship between μ
eff
and N
D
+
in 50-nm-thick
SOI, depicting that μ
eff
in thick SOI diffusion layers are com-
pletely the same as μ
eff
in bulk Si [9].
μ
e
in heavily doped ETSOI with T
SOI
of less than 15nm
was then studied. Since μ
eff
in ETSOI channel is greatly re-
duced because of increased phonon scattering (5 nm < T
SOI
<
20 nm) [10], it is anticipated that μ
eff
in heavily doped ETSOI
would be reduced as T
SOI
decreases. Fig. 8 shows the meas-
ured μ
eff
in heavily doped ETSOI with T
SOI
ranging from 5nm
to 15nm. In contrast with our initial anticipation, μ
eff
in heav-
ily doped ETSOI (T
SOI
= 10.1 nm and 5.6 nm, N
D
+
> 10
18
cm
-3
) is greater than μ
eff
in heavily doped bulk Si.
One might wonder that the observed μ
eff
enhancement is
3.3.1 IEDM10-54 978-1-4244-7419-6/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE