KR100611079B1 - Gate spacer formation method of nonvolatile memory device - Google Patents

Abstract

A method of forming a gate spacer of a nonvolatile memory device is disclosed. After the gate oxide film is formed on the semiconductor substrate, a cell gate formed by stacking a floating gate, an interlayer dielectric film, and a control gate is formed on the gate oxide film. The first impurity is implanted using the cell gate as a mask to form source / drain regions of a first concentration on the substrate surfaces on both sides of the cell gate. After the silicon oxide film is deposited on the resultant, a silicon nitride film having a relaxed stress is deposited on the silicon oxide film using silicon tetrachloride (SiCl ₄ ) gas. The silicon nitride film and the silicon oxide film are anisotropically etched to form a gate spacer made of a silicon oxide film / silicon nitride film on the sidewall of the cell gate. By implanting second impurities with the gate spacer as a mask, source / drain regions having a second concentration higher than the first concentration are formed on the substrate surfaces on both sides of the gate spacer. Stress at the upper corner of the drain region can be relaxed to prevent trapping of hot electrons into the gate spacer.

Description

Method of forming gate spacer in non-volatile memory device

1 is a diagram illustrating an energy band in the vicinity of a drain region in a conventional flash memory device.

2A to 2D are cross-sectional views illustrating a method of forming a gate spacer of a nonvolatile memory device according to the present invention.

<Explanation of symbols for the main parts of the drawings>

100 semiconductor substrate 102 gate oxide film

104: floating gate 106: interlayer dielectric film

108: control gate 110: cell gate

112: low concentration source / drain region 114: silicon oxide film

116 silicon nitride film 118 gate spacer

120: high concentration source / drain regions

The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, and more particularly, to a method of forming a gate spacer of a nonvolatile memory device.

Semiconductor memory devices, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and static random access memory (SRAM), are volatile and fast data input / output that loses data over time, and data is input once. If you do this, you can maintain the status, but it can be divided into ROM (read only memory) products with slow data input and output. Among these ROM products, there is an increasing demand for electrically erasable and programmable ROM (EEPROM) or flash memory that can electrically input and output data. Flash memory devices are an advanced form of EEPROM that can be electrically erased at high speed without removing them from the circuit board, and electrically control input and output of data using FN tunneling or hot electrons. It is a structure.

In a flash memory device, a cell transistor operated by an external peripheral circuit has a gate structure in which a floating gate and a control gate are stacked. The program operation of the cell transistor is performed by injecting a portion of the channel hot electrons into the floating gate through the tunnel oxide layer by F-N tunneling or hot electron injection. In order to perform such a program operation, 0V is generally applied to the bulk substrate and a high voltage of 20V or more is applied to the control gate provided to the word line of the cell array. At this time, a voltage of 10 MV / cm or more is induced at both ends of the tunnel oxide film, and electrons are injected from the substrate to the floating gate. On the other hand, the erase operation of the cell transistor is performed by applying 0V to the control gate and -20V to the bulk substrate to discharge the electrons injected into the floating gate to the substrate by the voltage difference between the floating gate and the substrate.

When the source / drain of the cell transistor is formed of a lightly doped impurity region, there is a problem in that the ON-current is reduced during a read operation, and when the source / drain of the cell transistor is formed of a highly doped impurity region, There is no punchthrough margin, which makes scaling down the transistor very difficult. In addition, high source / drain regions have a problem inevitably accompanying a hot-carrier effect as the cell size decreases.

The hot-carrier effect refers to a phenomenon that occurs when the gate oxide film becomes thinner and the gate length becomes shorter under a constant operating voltage, and the electric field intensity becomes very high at the region where the drain region and the channel region meet. That is, electrons traveling through the channel region encounter a very high electric field in the vicinity of the drain region, and electrons that get a lot of energy from the electric field form hot electrons. The generated hot electrons generate impact ionization to cause charge traps in the gate oxide layer, and also generate an interface state at the boundary between the gate oxide layer and the silicon substrate to generate a threshold voltage of the transistor. The reliability of the device is deteriorated.

In order to solve this problem, a method of forming a source / drain region of an LDD structure by using a spacer formed of an insulating material on a gate sidewall of a cell transistor has been developed. In this case, high temperature oxide (HTO) has been used as an insulating material constituting the gate spacer, but recently, silicon nitride (Si ₃ N ₄ ) has been mainly used as the degree of integration of devices increases.

The silicon nitride is a low pressure chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at a temperature of about 750 ~ 800 ℃ using a dichlorosilane (SiCl ₂ H ₂ ; DCS) gas and ammonia (NH ₃ ) gas as a reaction gas It is deposited by the method, but because of the characteristics of the film has a high stress (about 1.2 ~ 1.8E10 dyne / ㎠) causes a lot of problems. In particular, in the case of a flash memory device, the endurance characteristic of measuring the threshold voltage variation of the cell transistor while repeating the program and erase operations of data becomes a very important item in terms of reliability of the device. When used as a spacer, there is a problem that such durability characteristics are degraded.

1 is a diagram illustrating an energy band near a drain region in a conventional flash memory device.

Referring to FIG. 1, hot electrons and passion holes are trapped into the gate spacer at an upper corner of a drain region where stress is concentrated by a gate spacer made of silicon nitride. As a result, the drain current increases at a low drain bias, so that the threshold voltage of the cell transistor is fluctuated a lot, thereby deteriorating the durability characteristic.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a method of forming a gate spacer of a nonvolatile memory device capable of improving durability characteristics of a cell transistor.

The present invention to achieve the above object, forming a gate oxide film on a semiconductor substrate; Forming a cell gate formed by stacking a floating gate, an interlayer dielectric layer, and a control gate on the gate oxide layer; Forming a source / drain region of a first concentration on a surface of a substrate on both sides of the cell gate by ion implanting first impurities using the cell gate as a mask; Depositing a silicon oxide film on the resultant; Depositing a silicon nitride film having relaxed stress using silicon tetrachloride (SiCl ₄ ) gas on the silicon oxide film; Anisotropically etching the silicon nitride film and the silicon oxide film to form a gate spacer including a silicon oxide film / silicon nitride film on sidewalls of the cell gate; And implanting a second impurity using the gate spacer as a mask to form a source / drain region having a second concentration higher than the first concentration on the surface of the substrate on both sides of the gate spacer. Provided is a method of manufacturing a device.

According to the present invention, hot-carrier immunity can be improved by forming a gate spacer with silicon nitride having excellent stress characteristics.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.                     

2A to 2D are cross-sectional views illustrating a method of forming a gate spacer of a nonvolatile memory device according to the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 2A, a silicon oxide film or a silicon oxynitride film is grown on a semiconductor substrate 100 made of a material such as silicon to form a gate oxide film (eg, a tunnel oxide film) 102 of a cell transistor. . When exposed to air on the semiconductor substrate 100, a natural oxide film is formed by reacting with oxygen in the air. Therefore, in the semiconductor substrate 100 according to the present embodiment, although not shown, a natural oxide film is formed. In the present embodiment, the gate oxide film 102 is thinly grown to have a thickness of about 50 to 100 Å except for this natural oxide film.

A first conductive layer 103 to be used as a floating gate on the gate oxide layer 102 is formed to a thickness of about 2000 kPa by a low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) method, and a conventional doping method such as POCl ₃ diffusion and ion implantation is performed. Or doping the first conductive layer 103 with a high concentration of N-type impurities by in-situ doping. Preferably, the first conductive layer 103 is formed of polysilicon or amorphous silicon.

An insulating layer 105 made of ONO is formed on the first conductive layer 103. For example, the first conductive layer 103 is oxidized to grow a first oxide film having a thickness of about 100 GPa, and a nitride film of about 130 GPa is deposited thereon, and a second oxide film having a thickness of about 40 GPa is formed on the nitride film. An insulating layer 105 having an equivalent oxide film thickness of about 100 to 150 kPa is formed.

Subsequently, a metal silicide layer, such as a polysilicon layer doped with N ⁺ type, tungsten silicide (WSix), titanium silicide (TiSix), cobalt silicide (CoSix), and tantalum silicide (TaSix) on the insulating layer 105 The laminated second conductive layer 107 is deposited. Preferably, the polysilicon layer of the second conductive layer 107 is formed to a thickness of about 1000 kPa, and the metal silicide layer is formed to a thickness of about 1500 kPa.

Referring to FIG. 2B, a photoresist pattern is formed on the second conductive layer 107 by a photolithography process, and the second conductive layer 107 is formed by sequentially performing an etching process using the photoresist pattern as an etching mask. ), The insulating layer 105, and the first conductive layer 103 are patterned for each cell to form the gate 110 of the cell transistor in which the floating gate 104, the interlayer dielectric layer 106, and the control gate 108 are stacked. Form.

Subsequently, N-type impurities are implanted into the NMOS transistor region and P-type impurities are implanted into the PMOS transistor using the cell gate 110 as an ion implantation mask to form a low concentration source / drain region 112.

Referring to FIG. 2C, after the silicon oxide film 114 is deposited on the cell gate 110 and the substrate 100 to a thickness of about 100 μs by a chemical vapor deposition method at a temperature of about 720 to 750 ° C., the silicon The silicon nitride film 116 was deposited on the oxide film 114 to a thickness of about 700 to 1000 Pa by a low pressure chemical vapor deposition method. Preferably, the silicon oxide film 114 is formed to a thickness of 10 to 20% of the thickness of the silicon nitride film 116.

The silicon nitride film 116 is deposited by reacting silicon tetrachloride (SiCl ₄ ) gas and ammonia (NH ₃ ) gas at a temperature of about 600 to 700 ° C. and a pressure of about 10 to 300 torr. Conventionally, a silicon nitride film was deposited at a temperature of about 770 to 790 ° C using DCS gas as a reaction gas. However, according to the present invention, since the SiCl ₄ gas is used as the reaction gas, the deposition temperature range is about 600 to It can be lowered to 700 ℃ can reduce the stress of the silicon nitride film.

When the silicon nitride film 116 is deposited under such a condition, the stress caused by the silicon nitride film 116 is reduced, thereby improving immunity to hot electrons in the vicinity of the drain region under the silicon nitride film 116. The silicon oxide film 114 serves to relieve stress on the underlying layer when the silicon nitride film 116 is deposited.

Referring to FIG. 2D, the silicon nitride layer 116 and the silicon oxide layer 114 are anisotropically etched sequentially to form a gate spacer 118 including the silicon oxide layer 114 and the silicon nitride layer 116. Since the silicon nitride film 116 constituting the gate spacer 118 is deposited under a condition of reducing stress, immunity to hot electrons is improved in the vicinity of the drain region under the silicon nitride film 116. Therefore, the trapping of hot electrons and passion holes into the gate spacer 118 at the upper corner (see A) of the drain region can be reduced, thereby preventing the threshold voltage of the cell transistor from changing during the program / erase operation of data. have.

Next, using the gate spacer 118 as an ion implantation mask, N-type impurities are implanted into the NMOS transistor region and P-type impurities are implanted into the PMOS transistor to form a high concentration source / drain region 120. As a result of the above process, the source / drain of the LDD structure is completed.

As described above, according to the present invention, the silicon nitride film constituting the gate spacer is deposited under the condition that the stress is reduced, thereby alleviating the stress at the upper corner of the drain region in contact with the gate spacer. Accordingly, it is possible to prevent the hot electrons from being trapped from the upper corner of the drain region to the gate spacer to reduce the threshold voltage variation of the cell transistor during the program / erase operation of data.

As described above, although described with reference to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, those skilled in the art will be variously modified without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention described in the claims below. And can be changed.

Claims (3)

Forming a gate oxide film on the semiconductor substrate; Forming a cell gate formed by stacking a floating gate, an interlayer dielectric layer, and a control gate on the gate oxide layer; Forming a source / drain region of a first concentration on a surface of a substrate on both sides of the cell gate by ion implanting first impurities using the cell gate as a mask; Depositing a silicon oxide film on the resultant; Depositing a silicon nitride film having relaxed stress using silicon tetrachloride (SiCl ₄ ) gas on the silicon oxide film; Anisotropically etching the silicon nitride film and the silicon oxide film to form a gate spacer including a silicon oxide film / silicon nitride film on sidewalls of the cell gate; And And implanting a second impurity using the gate spacer as a mask to form a source / drain region having a second concentration higher than the first concentration on the surface of the substrate on both sides of the gate spacer. Method of manufacturing the device. The method of claim 1, wherein the silicon oxide layer constituting the gate spacer is deposited to a thickness of about 10 to 20% of the thickness of the silicon nitride layer. The silicon nitride film constituting the gate spacer is deposited by reacting silicon tetrachloride (SiCl ₄ ) gas and ammonia (NH ₃ ) gas at a temperature of 600 to 700 ° C. and a pressure of 10 to 300 torr. A method of manufacturing a nonvolatile memory device, characterized in that.

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