Photoemission study on electrical dipole at SiO2/Si and HfO2/SiO2 interfaces

Abstract

Electrical dipole at SiO2/Si and HfO2/SiO2 interfaces have been investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) under monochromatized Al Kα radiation. From the analysis of the cut-off energy for secondary photoelectrons measured at each thinning step of a dielectric layer by wet-chemical etching, an abrupt potential change caused by electrical dipole at SiO2/Si and HfO2/SiO2 interfaces has been clearly detected. Al-gate MOS capacitors with thermally-grown SiO2 and a HfO2/SiO2 dielectric stack were fabricated to evaluate the Al work function from the flat band voltage shift of capacitance–voltage (C–V) characteristics. Comparing the results of XPS and C–V measurements, we have verified that electrical dipole formed at the interface can be directly measured by photoemission measurements.