Abstract
Spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) with photon energy 0.75–6.5 eV at room temperature has been used to derive the optical properties of high- k ZrO 2 thin films on Si(1 0 0) substrates prepared by nitrogen-assisted, direct current reactive magnetron sputtering. The Tauc–Lorentz dispersion method was adopted to model the optical dispersion functions of the thin films as a function of annealing temperature. Excellent agreement has been found between the SE fitting results and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results, indicating that our model adequately described the measured SE data. Optical band gaps ( E g) were also obtained based on the extracted absorption edge. Our results suggest that nitrogen-assisted process can effectively limit the interfacial layer growth in high- k oxides.
Published Version
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