Calculation of the electron mobility in III-V inversion layers with high-κ dielectrics

Abstract

We calculate the electron mobility for a metal-oxide-semiconductor system with a metallic gate, high-κ dielectric layer, and III-V substrate, including scattering with longitudinal-optical (LO) polar-phonons of the III-V substrate and with the interfacial excitations resulting from the coupling of insulator and substrate optical modes among themselves and with substrate plasmons. In treating scattering with the substrate LO-modes, multisubband dynamic screening is included and compared to the dielectric screening in the static limit and with the commonly used screening model obtained by defining an effective screening wave vector. The electron mobility components limited by substrate LO phonons and interfacial modes are calculated for In0.53Ga0.47As and GaAs substrates with SiO2 and HfO2 gate dielectrics. The mobility components limited by the LO-modes and interfacial phonons are also investigated as a function of temperature. Scattering with surface roughness, fixed interface charge, and nonpolar-phonons is also included to judge the relative impact of each scattering mechanism in the total mobility for In0.53Ga0.47As with HfO2 gate dielectric. We show that InGaAs is affected by interfacial-phonon scattering to an extent larger than Si, lowering the expected performance, but probably not enough to question the technological relevance of InGaAs.