Ion polarization behavior in alumina under pulsed gate bias stress

Abstract

Alkali metal ion incorporation in alumina significantly increases alumina capacitance by ion polarization. With high capacitance, ion-incorporated aluminas become promising high dielectric constant (high-k) gate dielectric materials in field-effect transistors (FETs) to enable reduced operating voltage, using oxide or organic semiconductors. Alumina capacitance can be manipulated by incorporation of alkali metal ions, including potassium (K+), sodium (Na+), and lithium (Li+), having different bond strengths with oxygen. To investigate the electrical stability of zinc tin oxide-based transistors using ion incorporated alumina as gate dielectrics, pulsed biases at different duty cycles (20%, 10%, and 2% representing 5 ms, 10 ms, and 50 ms periods, respectively) were applied to the gate electrode, sweeping the gate voltage over series of these cycles. We observed a particular bias stress-induced decrease of saturation field-effect mobility accompanied by threshold voltage shifts (ΔVth) in potassium and sodium-incorporated alumina (abbreviated as PA and SA)-based FETs at high duty cycle that persisted over multiple gate voltage sweeps, suggesting a possible creation of new defects in the semiconductor. This conclusion is also supported by the greater change in the mobility-capacitance (μC) product than in capacitance itself. Moreover, a more pronounced ΔVth over shorter times was observed in lithium-incorporated alumina (abbreviated as LA)-based transistors, suggesting trapping of electrons in existing interfacial states. ΔVth from multiple gate voltage sweeps over time were fit to stretched exponential forms. All three dielectrics show good stability using 50-ms intervals (20-Hz frequencies), corresponding to 2% duty cycles.