Metrology of silicide contacts for future CMOS

Silicide materials (NiSi, COSi2, TiSi2, etc) are used to form low-resistance contacts between the back-end (W plugs and Cu interconnects) and front-end portions (silicon source, drain, and gate regions) of integrated CMOS circuits. At the 65 nm node, a transition from COSi2 to NiSi was necessary because of the unique capability of NiSi to form narrow silicide nanowires on active (monocrystalline) and gate (polycrystalline) lines. Like its predecessors TiSi2 and COSi2, NiSi is a mid-gap silicide, i.e., the Fermi level of the NiSi metal is pinned half-way between the conduction and valence band edges in silicon. This leads to a Schottky barrier between the silicide and silicon source-drain regions, which creates undesirable parasitic resistances. For future CMOS generations, band-edge silicides, such as PtSi for contacts to p-type or rare earth silicides for contacts to n-type Si will be needed. This paper reviews metrology and characterization techniques for NiSi process control for development and manufacturing, with special emphasis on x-ray reflectance and x-ray fluorescence. We also report measurement methods useful for development of a PtSi PMOS module.