Topside plugs for epitaxial contact formation

Abstract

Techniques are provided herein to form semiconductor devices that use uniform topside dielectric plugs as masking structures to form conductive contacts to various source or drain regions. In an example, a plurality of semiconductor devices each include one or more semiconductor regions extending in a first direction between corresponding source or drain regions. The source or drain regions are adjacent to one another along a second direction different from the first direction. Conductive contacts are formed over the source or drain regions of the semiconductor devices. A dielectric fill is between one or more adjacent pairs of conductive contacts and dielectric masking structures having a substantially uniform thickness are present over the dielectric fill between adjacent pairs of conductive contacts. This uniform thickness characteristic applies to all of the masking structures regardless of their length along the second direction.