Air-Spacer MOSFET With Self-Aligned Contact for Future Dense Memories

An air-spacer transistor with self-aligned contact (SAC) is proposed. Air-spacer is created by removing the nitride spacer after the SAC plug has been formed. A three-dimensional mixed-mode simulation shows that this transistor structure has 35% smaller area, 10% faster speed, and 18% lower switching energy than a non-SAC MOSFET.