The present application relates to a non-planar semiconductor device and a method of fabricating the same. More particularly, the present application relates to a semiconductor nanowire field effect transistor (FET) device having a channel that is strained, and a method of forming the same.
The use of non-planar semiconductor devices such as, for example, FinFETs, trigate and gate-all around semiconductor nanowire field effect transistors (FETs) is the next step in the evolution of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices. The addition of stress elements in non-planar semiconductor devices is of critical importance in avoiding serious performance losses migrating out of planar device architectures. Notably, the ability to strain the channels of semiconductor nanowire field effect transistors is an important process capability to implement for performance device tuning. Thus, techniques are needed to form semiconductor nanowire field effect transistor (FET) devices that have strained channels.