A Novel D2 Plasma Treatment for Defect Passivation: From Modeling to Process Optimization

We present a novel deuterium (D2) plasma treatment process for interface passivation that leads to reliability improvement under a low thermal budget. Specifically, physics-based simulations revealed a marked enhancement of key reliability phenomena such as leakage current, Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) and Voltage-Dependent Dielectric Breakdown (VDDB), also confirmed by experiments. Furthermore, the plasma treatment process optimization is accelerated through a physical model based on the Ginestra ™ simulation platform, which connects the process conditions to the defect passivation and the best device reliability.