Study of formation mechanism of nickel silicide discontinuities in high-performance complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor devices

We performed detailed analysis of nickel suicide discontinuities induced by agglomeration, which causes the increased electric resistance in high-performance complementary metal oxide semiconductor devices, by using advanced physical analysis techniques: transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (S EM) electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis, and three-dimensional atom-probe (AP) analysis. We confirmed that the agglomeration of the nickel suicide is related to elongated-triangular-shaped splits, which cause discontinuities that occur at low-angle grain boundaries pinned by boron clusters even with small stress. We successfully determined the formation mechanism of these nickel suicide discontinuities in detail. (C) 2014 The Japan Society of Applied Physics