Formation of hybrid hafnium oxide by applying sacrifacial silicon film

Abstract

In the fabrication of hafnium oxide (HfO2)-based metal–insulator–semiconductor (MIS) devices, a sacrificial amorphous silicon (a-Si) film was used as silicon source for facilitating the formation of hafnium silicate (Hf-silicate; HfSiO) between HfO2 and crystallized Si (c-Si). HfSiO can assist in changing the phase of the HfO2 film into the tetragonal phase and achieve high dielectric constant. The combination of HfSiO and HfO2 was named as “Hybrid HfO2”. When this Hybrid HfO2 insulator was applied to MIS devices, it can form a good insulator/semiconductor interface with c-Si. Hybrid HfO2 cannot only suppress the leakage current but also show high dielectric strength. The Hybrid HfO2 film in this work exhibited a high dielectric constant of 25.5 and a high dielectric strength of 17.9 MV/cm.