Effects of annealing temperature on the characteristics of ALD-deposited HfO2 in MIM capacitors

• DOI: 10.1016/j.tsf.2005.12.288
• Publication Date: 2006-02-16T12:21:15Z
• Authors: S.-W. Jeong; H.J. Lee; K.S. Kim; M.T. You; Y. Roh; T. Noguchi; W. Xianyu; J. Jung
• Keywords: 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology; 7. Clean energy

Abstract We have investigated the annealing effects of HfO 2 films deposited by an atomic layer deposition (ALD) method on the electrical and physical properties in the Si/SiO 2 /Pt/ALD-HfO 2 /Pd metal–insulator–metal (MIM) capacitors. If the annealing temperature for HfO 2 films was restricted below 500 °C, an annealing step using a rapid thermal processor (RTP) improves the electrical properties such as the dissipation factor and the dielectric constant. On the other hand, annealing at 700 °C degrades the electrical characteristics in general; the dissipation factor increases over the frequency range of 1∼4 MHz, and the leakage current increases up to 2 orders at the low electric field regions. We found that the degradation of electrical properties is due to the grain growth in the HfO 2 film (i.e., poly-crystallization of the film) by the high temperature annealing processing. We suggested that the annealing temperature must be restricted below 500 °C to obtain the high quality high- k film for the MIM capacitors.