Microscopic origins of dry-etching damages in silicon large-scaled integrated circuits revealed by electrically detected magnetic resonance

We reveal microscopic structures of dry-etching damage defects in practical Si metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors. Electrically detected magnetic resonance spectroscopy identified interstitial defects of carbon (a split C-Si interstitialcy) and fluorine (a bond-centered fluorine) as the major dry-etching damages, which survived even through high-temperature thermal processes. In addition, we found other minor centers of carbon, fluorine, and possibly hydrogen impurities. Our observation indicates that the observed defects became much more stable than those in bulk silicon