Advanced low damage manufacturing processes to fabricate SOI FinFETs and measurement of electrical properties

In this paper, FinFETs are realized by integrating neutral beam etching(NBE) and microwave annealing (MWA) into the fabrication process. Electrical characteristics are measured at room temperature and parameters such as Sub-threshold swing of 89 mV/decade, I_on/I_off of 10⁶, DIBL of 72 mV/V and effective mobility (μ_eff) of 502 cm²V⁻¹ s⁻¹ are obtained with W_fin/L_gate = 40/100 nm. These characteristics are superior by using neutral beam etching than by using RIE-like condition, and the V_t shift at reduced L_gate is also suppressed. A damaged layer at high-k/Si interface by RIE-like condition is observed in the TEM image, which can correspond to the degradation in electrical characteristics. Furthermore, the proportional scaling of I_on versus W_fin indicates negligible S/D resistance due to good activation by Microwave annealing (MWA). In short, functional FinFETs were fabricated by Neutral beam etching (NBE) and Microwave annealing (MWA) for the first time, and these results pave ways for the techniques to be adopted in the advanced semiconductor processing. The SOI FinFETs demonstrate proportional scaling of on current versus the fin width and indicating that the S/D region is well activated by the microwave annealing method.