Interfacial modulation and electrical properties improvement of solution-processed ZrO2 gate dielectrics upon Gd incorporation

Abstract

In this work, the band gap, interfacial properties and electrical properties of Gd doped ZrO2 high-k gate dielectric films deposited by solution method have been systematically investigated. Results have shown that Gd doping can increase band gap energy from 5.65 to 5.92 eV and effectively restrain the formation of low-k SiOx interfacial layer between dielectric and Si substrate. Moreover, the conduction band offset is increased from 2.57 to 3.06 eV by Gd doping, which effectively reduces the leakage current density to 1.8 × 10−6 A/cm2.