Electron-beam-evaporated thin films of hafnium dioxide for fabricating electronic devices

Abstract

Thin films of hafnium dioxide (HfO2) are widely used as the gate oxide in fabricating integrated circuits because of their high dielectric constants. In this paper, the authors report the growth of thin films of HfO2 using e-beam evaporation, and the fabrication of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits using this HfO2 thin film as the gate oxide. The authors analyzed the thin films using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction, thereby demonstrating that the e-beam-evaporation-grown HfO2 film has a polycrystalline structure and forms an excellent interface with silicon. Accordingly, the authors fabricated 31-stage CMOS ring oscillator to test the quality of the HfO2 thin film as the gate oxide, and obtained excellent rail-to-rail oscillation waveforms from it, denoting that the HfO2 thin film functioned very well as the gate oxide.