Deuterium passivation in CMOS technology

A giant deuterium isotope effect discovered during atomic scale STM hydrogen desorption experiments on the Si(100) surface was found to translate to CMOS technology where hot carriers are also responsible for hydrogen desorption at the oxide-silicon interface. In addition to direct electron stimulated desorption, a multiple electron vibrational heating hydrogen desorption mechanism was also observed in the STM experiments. In CMOS this latter mechanism would give rise to degradation at low supply voltages that would increase rapidly with increasing channel current density. Deuterium has also been used to show that under normal stressing conditions the channel hot carriers dominate the interface degradation process. High pressure deuterium processing is also discussed as a means to overcome background hydrogen and to accommodate the lower thermal budgets of recent technology. Finally, the ultraclean integration of carbon nanotubes with semiconductor surfaces will be demonstrated for exploring key issues of these interesting hybrid systems.