Properties and benefits of fluorine in silicon and silicon-germanium devices

This paper reviews the behaviour of fluorine in silicon and silicon-germanium devices. Fluorine is shown to have many beneficial effects in polysilicon emitter bipolar transistors, including higher values of gain, lower emitter resistance, lower 1/f noise and more ideal base characteristics. These results are explained by passivation of trapping states at the polysilicon/silicon interface and accelerated break-up of the interfacial oxide layer. Fluorine is also shown to be extremely effective at suppressing the diffusion of boron, completely suppressing boron transient enhanced diffusion and significantly reducing boron thermal diffusion. The boron thermal diffusion suppression correlates with the appearance of a fluorine peak on the SIMS profile at approximately half the projected range of the fluorine implant, which is attributed to vacancy- fluorine clusters. When applied to bipolar technology, fluorine implantation leads to a record fT of 110 GHz in a silicon bipolar transistor.