Nitride spacer for protecting a fin-shaped field effect transistor (finFET) device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9306036-B2
Application number	US-201313953833-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 30, 2013
Priority date	Jul 30, 2013
Publication date	Apr 5, 2016
Grant date	Apr 5, 2016

Abstract

Approaches for protecting a semiconductor device (e.g., a fin field effect transistor device (FinFET)) using a nitride spacer are provided. Specifically, a nitride spacer is formed over an oxide and a set of fins of the FinFET device to mitigate damage during subsequent processing. The nitride spacer is deposited before the block layers to protect the oxide on top of a set of gates in an open area of the FinFET device uncovered by a photoresist. The oxide on top of each gate will be preserved throughout all of the block layers to provide hardmask protection during subsequent source/drain epitaxial layering. Furthermore, the fins that are open and uncovered by the photoresist or the set of gates remain protected by the nitride spacer. Accordingly, fin erosion caused by amorphization of the fins exposed to resist strip processes is prevented, resulting in improved device yield.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for forming a device, the method comprising:
forming a set of gate structures over a set of fins, each of the set of gate structures comprising a nitride capping layer;
forming an oxide over the nitride capping layer;
forming a nitride spacer over the oxide, wherein fins that are uncovered by the set of gate structures are covered by the nitride spacer; and
forming at least one source/drain epitaxial layer on the device.…

Assignees

• Globalfoundries Inc

Inventors

• Ganz Michael

Classifications

• H10P14/69433

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10P14/6548 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• G06F30/327

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F2111/20

  Physics · mapped topic

• H10D30/62

  Electricity · mapped topic