Methods for preventing deleterious punch-through during local interconnect formation

摘要

During damascene formation of local interconnects in a semiconductor wafer, a punch-through region can be formed into the substrate as a result of exposing the oxide spacers that are adjacent to a transistor gate to one or more etching plasmas that are used to etch one or more overlying dielectric layers. A punch-through region can damage the transistor circuit. In order to prevent punch-through, the oxide spacers are removed prior to forming an overlying dielectric layer.