PROCEDURE FOR MANUFACTURING INTEGRATED CIRCUIT DEVICES HAVING SUB-MICROMETER DIMENSION ELEMENTS, AND RESULTING STRUCTURE

摘要

A procedure for manufacturing a semiconductor integrated circuit structure having device elements of sub-micrometer dimension is described. A surface isolation pattern (12) in a semiconductor substrate (10) isolates regions of the semiconductor within the substrate from one another. These semiconductor regions ere designated to contain devices. At least one layer (24) is formed over the device designated regions and etched to result in a patterned layer (24 min ) having substantially vertical sidewalls. A controlled sub-micrometer thickness sidewall layer (26 min ) is formed on these vertical sidewalls. The patterned layer (24 min ) is then removed which leaves the pattern of sub-micrometer thickness sidewall (26 min ), portions of which extend across certain of the device regions. A desired pattern of PN junctions is now formed in the substrate using for example diffusion or ion implantation techniques with the controlled sub-micrometer thickness sidewall layer (26 min ) used as a mask. The effect is the transfer of the submicron pattern into underlying region. This method is particularly useful in forming a sub-micrometer dimension gate electrode of a field effect transistor. For improving the delineation of source, drain, and channel regions in such field effect transistors, a sidewall spacer layer (50) is formed on the sidewalls of gate electrodes (20 min ) prior to the doping process.