Stacked Metal Layers as Gates for MOSFET Threshold Voltage Control

Abstract

Two layer metal gate stacks allow the effective work function to be tuned by varying the thickness of the first metal layer. Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors were fabricated by using two metals of very different work functions on thermal oxide gate dielectric where the bottom layer thickness is varied over a range from 0 to 50nm. Electrical and thermal stability measurements were performed on the Al on TaN metal gate stack. The effective workfunction is seen to shift from the value of one metal to the other rapidly as the thickness of the first metal layer is varied from 0 to approximately 10nm. The flat band voltage (V_fb) transition matches the workfunction difference of the two metals in the stack. The advantage of this approach when applied to metal-oxide-semiconductor-field-effect-transistors (MOSFETs) is that it allows the effective workfunction of the metal stack, and the threshold voltage (V_th) of the device to be fine tuned. It also allows for eventual dual gate complementary MOS (CMOS) device fabrication where two different work function metal stacks are necessary, without processing directly on the gate dielectric. A model is proposed to elucidate the workfunction tuning mechanism.