Patent ID: 7268048

Claim:
A method of forming metal silicide regions on a semiconductor substrate, comprising the steps of: providing insulator filled, shallow trench isolation (STI) regions in top portions of said semiconductor substrate; providing a gate insulator layer on a portion of said semiconductor substrate not occupied by said insulator filled STI regions, and providing a conductive gate structure comprised with insulator sidewall spacers, on said gate insulator layer; performing an ion implantation of a dopant to form a source/drain region in a portion of said semiconductor not covered by said conductive gate structure; performing a pre-metal silicide formation treatment further comprising: plasma oxidizing the surface of the source/drain region to form an oxide thereon, treating the oxide with a first agent to remove the oxide, the treating resulting in dopant based defects, forming the dopant based defects into a solid compound or gas compound using a second agent wherein the first agent to the second agent has a ratio between about 1:1 to 1000:1, and removing the solid or gas compound; and forming said metal silicide regions on said source/drain region and on a top surface of said conductive gate structure.