Application of selective liquid-phase deposition to fabricate contact holes without plasma damage

Abstract

This work develops an alternative method, selective liquid-phase deposition (S-LPD), to fabricate contact holes instead of reactive ion etching. In preliminary experiments, deep n(+)/p junction diodes with contact holes prepared by S-LPD exhibit much less reverse current, unity ideality factor, larger forward current, lower contact resistance, and higher thermal stability than those prepared by reactive ion etching. Further superiority of plasma damage-free near-surface regions is also investigated using Schottky and ultrashallow junction diodes. Experimental results indicate that S-LPD can be applied to the submicron contact-hole process. The data after reverse bias temperature stress reveals the satisfactory reliability of S-LPD contact holes. This work demonstrates that the S-LPD technology is a highly promising means of replacing reactive ion etching processes to form submicron contact holes as reliably as those by wet-etching. (C) 1999 The Electrochemical Society. S0013-4651(98)08-119-1. All rights reserved.