Impact of post-nitridation annealing on ultra-thin gate oxide performance

Decoupled-Plasma Nitridation (DPN) process with high level of nitrogen incorporation is widely used in the state-of-the-art technology, in order to reduce gate leakage current and boron penetration. However, due to the low temperature DPN process, the post-nitridation annealing treatment is required to improve the ultra-thin gate oxide integrity. In this paper, the effect of post-nitridation annealing on DPN ultra-thin gate oxide was investigated. The device performance and reliability were evaluated in three different post-nitridation annealing ambient (N₂/O₂, He, and NO).