Trench based structure to modulate the stress induced by silicide metallized electrodes in semiconductor device

Though the silicide metallized electrodes which are widely used in semiconductor devices have their advantage of low contact resistance, they often induce harmful stress in devices. Considering this, a trench-based structure designed to manipulate the silicide induced stress is reported in this letter. The effects of the structure are demonstrated by the numerical simulation results based on the typical PMOSFETs with their electrodes formed by CoSi2 and NiSi. It is shown that, while the trench-based structure is applied, the harmful tensile channel stress caused by the silicide electrode can be reduced as low as about 50%. As a result, the output current can be increased about 7.5%. These results indicate the potential of this novel trench based structure to serve as the stress modulation structure in the semiconductor device with silicide electrodes.