1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a metal gate structure and a manufacturing method thereof, and more particularly, to a metal gate structure and a manufacturing method applied with the gate last process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With a trend towards scaling down size of the semiconductor device, conventional methods, which are used to achieve optimization, such as reducing thickness of the gate dielectric layer, for example the thickness of silicon dioxide layer, have faced problems such as leakage current due to tunneling effect. In order to keep progression to next generation, high-K materials are used to replace the conventional silicon oxide to be the gate dielectric layer because it effectively decreases physical limit thickness, reduces leakage current, and obtains equivalent capacitor in an identical equivalent oxide thickness (EOT).
On the other hand, the conventional polysilicon gate also has faced problems such as inferior performance due to boron penetration and unavoidable depletion effect which increases equivalent thickness of the gate dielectric layer, reduces gate capacitance, and worsens a driving force of the devices. Thus work function metals are developed to replace the conventional polysilicon gate to be the control electrode that competent to the high-K gate dielectric layer.
However, the high-K material is susceptible to following processes. For example, the high-K gate dielectric layer may be exposed and thus is easily oxidized during the following processes. Consequently, the exposed and oxidized high-K gate dielectric suffers degrading or uncertainty to its dielectric constant and thus the reliability of the gate structure is adversely impacted. The exposed high-K gate dielectric layer may be damaged in the processes and thus the electrical performance of the semiconductor device is deteriorated. Therefore there is always a continuing need in the semiconductor processing art to develop the semiconductor device renders high-K gate dielectric layer and gate structure having superior reliability even though the conventional silicon dioxide or silicon oxynitride gate dielectric layer is replaced by the high-K gate dielectric layer and the conventional polysilicon gate is replaced by the metal gate.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a metal gate structure. The metal gate structure includes a high-K gate dielectric layer, a metal gate having at least a U-shaped work function metal layer positioned on the high-K gate dielectric layer, and a silicon carbonitride (SiCN) seal layer positioned on sidewalls of the high-K gate dielectric layer and the metal gate.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a manufacturing method for a metal gate structure. The manufacturing method includes providing a substrate having a dummy gate formed thereon, the dummy gate comprising at least a sacrificial layer; performing an atomic layer deposition (ALD) method to form a SiCN seal layer on the substrate and the dummy gate, the ALD method comprising introducing a hydrocarbon (CxHy) gas; removing the sacrificial layer of the dummy gate to form a gate trench on the substrate; and forming a metal gate in the gate trench.
According to the metal gate structure and the manufacturing method thereof provided by the present invention, the ALD method is provided to form the SiCN seal layer having low wet etching rate on the sidewalls of the metal gate and the high-K gate dielectric layer. Since the SiCN seal layer has the low wet etching rate, it renders superior protection to the high-K gate dielectric layer in the following etching or cleaning processes. And thus oxidation of the high-K gate dielectric layer is avoided. Accordingly, the manufacturing method for a metal gate structure provided by the present invention provides a metal gate structure having superior reliability.
These and other objectives of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment that is illustrated in the various figures and drawings.
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According to the preferred embodiment, hydrocarbon such as ethylene serves as the source of carbon. Therefore the seal layer 122 comprising SiCN is formed on the substrate 100 and the dummy gate 110. More important, the SiCN seal layer 122 formed by the ALD method 120 provided by the preferred embodiment is a dense layer with low wet etching rate. The wet etching rate of the SiCN seal layer 122 is lower than 5. Please refer to Table 1, which presents the wet etching rate of the SiCN seal layer 122 formed by the ALD layer 120 provided by the preferred embodiment and wet etching rates of SiCN or SiN layers formed by other methods:
Table 1 presents the wet etching rate of the SiCN seal layer 122 formed by the ALD layer 120 provided by the preferred embodiment, the wet etching rates of SiCN or SiN layers formed by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and the wet etching rates of SiN layers formed by the plasma enhanced ALD (PEALD). Furthermore, Table 1 further presents the wet etching rates of layers formed by CVD method with different precursor such as bis(tertiary-butylamino)silane (BTBAS), carbon-sourced hexachloride disilane (CHCD), disilane (DIS), and hexachloride disilane (HCD) introduced. Table 1 also presents the wet etching rates of the layers formed by PEALD with introducing DCS and different process temperature. According to Table 1, the wet etching rates of the SiCN seal layer 122 to DHF and phosphoric acrid are all lower than 5 that is much lower than the etching rates of the SiCN or SiN layer formed by other methods.
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More important, it is well-known that selective strain scheme (SSS) such as a selective epitaxial growth (SEG) method is usually used to form the source/drain 136. In detail, the SSS is to form a recess (not shown) in the substrate 100 at two sides of the spacer 134. Subsequently, proper cleaning step is performed to clean the recesses and followed by performing the SEG method to form an epitaxial layer having SiGe for p-type semiconductor device or an epitaxial layer having SiC for n-type semiconductor device respectively in each recess. The formed epitaxial layers serves as the source/drain 136. Since the SiCN seal layer 122 provided by the preferred embodiment have the advantage of low wet etching rate, it renders superior protection to the high-K gate dielectric layer 114 in the etching process used to form the recesses and in the cleaning process used to clean the recesses.
Additionally, it is well-known to those skilled in the art that a silicide (not shown) is usually formed on the surface of source/drain 136 for reducing resistance. The silicide is formed by firstly forming a metal layer on the substrate and subsequently performing a thermal process. Thus the metal layer is reacted with the silicon in the source/drain 136 and transitional silicides are formed. Then, a wet etching process is performed to remove the un-reacted metal and followed by performing another thermal process to transfer the transitional silicides into silicides. Since the SiCN seal layer 122 provided by the preferred embodiment has the advantage of low wet etching rate, it renders superior protection to the high-K gate dielectric layer 114 during the wet etching process used to remove the un-reacted metal layer.
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According to the metal gate structure and the manufacturing method thereof provided by the present invention, the ALD method 120 is performed to form the SiCN seal layer 122 having low wet etching rate on the sidewalls of the metal gate 110a and the high-K gate dielectric layer 112. Since the SiCN seal layer 122 has the low wet etching rate, it renders superior protection to the high-K gate dielectric layer 114 in the following processes such as the etching process used to form the recesses for the SEG method, the cleaning process for cleaning the recesses, the etching process used to remove the un-reacted metal layer in the silicide process, and any necessary wet cleaning process required by semiconductor fabricating processes. Accordingly, the high-K gate dielectric layer 114 is protected from oxidation and thus reliability is improved.
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According to the preferred embodiment, hydrocarbon such as ethylene serves as the source of carbon. Therefore the seal layer 222 comprising SiCN is formed on the substrate 200 and the dummy gate 210. More important, the SiCN seal layer 222 formed by the ALD method 220 provided by the preferred embodiment is a dense layer with low wet etching rate. The wet etching rate of the SiCN seal layer 122 is lower than 5. It is noticeable that the wet etching rate of the SiCN seal layer 222 formed by the ALD layer 220 provided by the preferred embodiment and wet etching rates of SiCN or SiN layers formed by other methods, such as CVD or PEALD, also presented in Table 1, therefore those details are omitted herein in the interest of brevity. According to Table 1, it is found that the wet etching rates of the SiCN seal layer 222 to DHF and phosphoric acrid are all lower than 5 that is much lower than the etching rates of the SiCN or SiN layer formed by other methods.
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According to the metal gate structure and the manufacturing method thereof provided by the present invention, the ALD method 220 is performed to form the SiCN seal layer 122 having low wet etching rate formed on the sidewalls of the high-K gate dielectric layer 212 and the metal gate 210a. Since the SiCN seal layer 222 has the low wet etching rate, it renders superior protection to the high-K gate dielectric layer 214 in the following processes such as etching process used to form the recesses for SEG method, the cleaning process used to clean the recesses, the etching process used to remove the CESL 240 and the ILD layer 242, and any necessary wet cleaning process required by semiconductor fabricating processes. Accordingly, the high-K gate dielectric layer 212 is protected from oxidation and thus reliability is improved.
As mentioned above, according to the metal gate structure and the manufacturing method thereof provided by the present invention, the ALD method is provided to form the SiCN seal layer having low wet etching rate on the sidewalls of the metal gate and the high-K gate dielectric layer. Since the SiCN seal layer has the low wet etching rate, it renders superior protection to the high-K gate dielectric layer during the following etching or cleaning processes. And thus oxidation of the high-K gate dielectric layer is avoided. Accordingly, the manufacturing method for a metal gate structure provided by the present invention provides a metal gate structure having superior reliability.
Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device and method may be made while retaining the teachings of the invention.