Effective Schottky Barrier lowering for contact resistivity reduction using silicides as diffusion sources

In this work we present a potential solution for forming ultra-shallow junctions with extremely low contact resistivities in which dopants are implanted into silicides and diffused to the semiconductor interface using low temperature anneals. Conventional silicide process requires a fine tuning of silicide thickness and deep source/drain doping profile to achieve low contact resistance and low source/drain diffusion sheet resistance. With the silicide implantation approach, we show that they can be engineered independently, providing a larger design space for the reduction of total external resistance.