Nitrogen oxidation of etched MOS gate structure

Abstract

A method of manufacturing a metal oxide semiconductor (500). A gate structure of the metal oxide semiconductor is etched (510). A nitrogen-comprising gas, which may be NO or N2O, is made to flow over the metal oxide semiconductor (500). A pre-implant film (620) is grown over the edges of the gate structure. The pre-implant film may repair damage to a gate stack edge caused by an etching process. The film may be substantially silicon nitride. Beneficially, such a film may be thinner than a conventional silica oxide film. A thinner film does not deleteriously contribute to non-uniformities in a tunnel oxide. A non-uniform tunnel oxide may result in a non-uniform field between a gate and a channel. Non-uniform fields may have numerous deleterious effects. Advantageously, embodiments of the present invention overcome prior art deficiencies in repairing gate stack edge defects. In this novel manner, gate stack edge defects may be physically repaired without deleterious consequences to the electrical behavior of a metal oxide semiconductor device. The novel application of silicon nitride to this application allows thin repair layers to be grown. Advantageously, semiconductors manufactured using embodiments of the present invention may utilize smaller process feature sizes, resulting in denser arrays of semiconductor devices, resulting in lower costs for such devices and realizing a competitive advantage to practitioners of the improvements in the arts herein described.

Description

technical field [0001] Embodiments of the present invention relate to the design and manufacture of a submicron metal-oxide-semiconductor, more specifically, embodiments of the present invention relate to providing a method for reducing erosion by oxynitride. Background technique [0002] Flash memory is a type of semiconductor computer memory that has many desirable characteristics. Like read-only memory (ROM), flash memory is non-volatile memory, which means its contents are stable and retained without power. [0003] Flash memory devices have achieved great commercial success in the electronic device market. A major benefit of flash memory over ROM is that its memory contents can be changed after manufacture. Flash memory is widely accepted in many types of computers, including desktop computers, mobile phones or PDAs. Flash memory is also widely used in digital cameras and mobile digital music players, such as MP3 players. [0004] Flash-based storage devices are gra...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Manufacturers may need to transform or completely rework process libraries and process flows to implement new manufacturing processes

Additionally, retooling a fabrication line is very expensive in terms of direct expense and opportunity cost because of the time required to perform retooling, so any solution to repair gate stack oxide damage needs to be compatible with existing semiconductor processes and equipment without the need to rework well-architected tools and techniques

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