Stepwise Ni-silicide Process for Parasitic Resistance Reduction for Silicon/metal Contact Junction

The parasitic resistance is studied to silicon/metal contact junction for improving device performance and to lower contact/serial resistance silicide in natural sequence. In this paper constructs the stepwise Ni silicide process for parasitic resistance reduction for silicon/metal contact junction. We have investigated multi-step Ni silicide on SiGe substrate with stepwise annealing method as an alternative to compose more thermally reliable Ni silicide layer. Stepwise annealing for silicide formation is exposed to heating environment with $5^{\circ}C/sec$ for 10 seconds and a dwelling for both 10 and 30 seconds, and ramping-up and the dwelling was repeated until the final annealing temperature of $700\;^{\circ}C$ is achieved. Finally a direct comparison for single step and stepwise annealing process is obtained for 20 nm nickel silicide through stepwise annealing is $5.64\;{\Omega}/square$ at $600\;^{\circ}C$, and it is 42 % lower than that of as nickel sputtered. The proposed stepwise annealing for Ni silicidation can provide the least amount of NiSi at the interface of nickel silicide and silicon, and it provides lower resistance, higher thermal-stability, and superior morphology than other thermal treatment.