The Role of Strain in New Semiconductor Devices

A study was conducted to determine the stress/strain of a semiconductor devices using Reciprocal space map (RSM). Stress/strain factors can be used as a design element to improve the mobility of the electrons in a semiconductor devices. The study prepared RSM of a high-speed SiGe pMOS structure and symmetrically strained SiGe/Ge multilayers were grown epitaxillay using LEPECVD on Si(001). The SiGe/Ge double layers were prepared on a virtual substrate layer, while the layer thickness were designed to balance the compressive strain in the QWs with the tensile strain. It was observed that the stress introduced by the second order packaging easily affected the performance and the aging of high performance devices. It was concluded that HRXRD can be used as a nondestructive and reliable method for strain determination and improved the performance.