Low-Frequency Noise Performance of HfO2-Based Gate Stacks

The low-frequency noise characteristics of HfO 2 -based dielectrics have been investigated. Attention is given to the deposition technique (metal oxide chemical vapor deposition or atomic layer deposition) used, the HfO 2 film thickness, and the use of a SiO 2 interface layer. n-Type metal oxide semiconductor devices with equivalent oxide thicknesses (EOTs) of 1.5, 2, 3, and 5.5 nm were studied. It is shown that the LF noise of such high-k transistors is 1/f like. The behavior of the normalized current spectral density vs the drain current points out that for relative thin interfacial layers and at high gate voltages carrier trapping in the HfO 2 layer governs the current fluctuations. The trap densities extracted from the noise are up to 200 times higher than in a thermal oxide reference wafer (5.5 nm EOT). The deposition technique has no strong impact on the density of traps in the high-k layer, which is in the range of 2-20 X 10 1 9 cm - 3 eV - 1 . However, a strong difference was observed in the 1/f noise contribution, which is dominated by carrier scattering at charged traps. For HfO 2 , the scattering coefficient derived from the 1/f noise is smaller than for SiO 2 , which can be interpreted in terms of the suppression of the coulomb scattering by the high dielectric constant.

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