Abstract
In this letter, the authors investigate the strain induced by titanium nitride (TiN) electrode and effective work function (EWF) tuning for metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs). Scaling of TiN thickness was found to be effective both in increasing tensile stress on Si substrates and in lowering the EWF of metal gate n-MOSFETs. The device with 3 nm TiN as a gate electrode showed favorable threshold voltage (V-th) for n-MOSFETs as well as higher channel electron mobility by 17% compared to the device with 20 nm TiN film. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.