A study on contact resistance reduction in Ni Germanide/Ge using Sb interlayer

In this paper, the decrease in the contact resistance of Ni germanide/Ge contact was studied as a function of the thickness of the antimony (Sb) interlayer for high performance Ge MOSFETs. Sb layers with various thickness of 2, 5, 8 and 12 nm were deposited by RF-Magnetron sputter on n-type Ge on Si wafers, followed by in situ deposition of 15nm-thick Ni film. The contact resistance of samples with the Sb interlayer was lower than that of the reference sample without the Sb interlayer. We found that the Sb interlayer can lower the contact resistance of Ni germanide/Ge contact but the reduction of contact resistance becomes saturated as the Sb interlayer thickness increases. The proposed method is useful for high performance n-channel Ge MOSFETs.