Abstract
Hafnium oxide and silicate materials are now incorporated into working CMOS devices, however the crystallisation mechanism is still poorly understood. In particular, addition of SiO2 to HfO2 has been shown to increase the crystallisation temperature of HfO2 hence allowing it to remain amorphous under current processing conditions. Building on earlier work we here investigate bulk HfxSi1-xO2 samples to determine the effect of SiO2 on the crystallisation pathway. Techniques such as XRD, HTXRD, thermal analysis techniques and TEM are used. It is found that the addition of SiO2 has very little affect on the crystallisation path at temperatures below 900°C but at higher temperatures a second t-HfO2 phase nucleates and is stabilised due to the strain of the surrounding amorphous SiO2 material. With an increase in SiO2 content the temperature at which this nucleation and stabilisation occurs is increased. The effect of strain has implications for inhibiting the crystallisation of the high-k layer, reduction of grain boundaries and hence diffusion, reduction of formation of interface layers and the possibility of stabilising t-HfO2 rather than m-HfO2 hence increasing the dielectric of the layer.
