Research Progress of High Dielectric Constant Zirconia-Based Materials for Gate Dielectric Application

Junan Xie,Honglong Ning,Zhihang Li,Yiping Wang,Shangxiong Zhou,Rihui Yao,Zhihao Liang,Zhennan Zhu,Hong Tao,Junbiao Peng

doi:10.3390/coatings10070698

Abstract

The high dielectric constant ZrO2, as one of the most promising gate dielectric materials for next generation semiconductor device, is expected to be introduced as a new high k dielectric layer to replace the traditional SiO2 gate dielectric. The electrical properties of ZrO2 films prepared by various deposition methods and the main methods to improve their electrical properties are introduced, including doping of nonmetal elements, metal doping design of pseudo-binary alloy system, new stacking structure, coupling with organic materials and utilization of crystalline ZrO2 as well as optimization of low-temperature solution process. The applications of ZrO2 and its composite thin film materials in metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) and thin film transistors (TFTs) with low power consumption and high performance are prospected.

Highlights

Since the invention of transistors, SiO2 has been the most practical choice of gate dielectric materials for field effect transistors
This review focuses on high-k zirconium-based oxides, which are more abundant in nature have many excellent properties similar to hafnium-based oxides
The gate depletion effect of poly-Si will form a high resistance gate, and the interface mismatch between poly-Si gate and high k dielectric lead to the decrease of carrier mobility

Summary

Introduction

Since the invention of transistors, SiO2 has been the most practical choice of gate dielectric materials for field effect transistors. It has several significant advantages, such as high compatibility with silicon chip technology, uniform conformal oxide layer, high interface quality, good thermodynamic stability in contact with Si, etc., which has dominated the silicon microelectronics industry for decades. As the density of integrated circuit increases exponentially, the feature size of metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) decreases rapidly, resulting in the thickness of the SiO2 layer presently used as the gate dielectric becoming thinner. Relevant researchers have proposed the application of insulating gates with high dielectric constant (high-k) materials, which can increase their own physical thickness while ensuring the same channel control ability as ultrathin SiO2

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion