Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and capacitance measurements were used to study the effect of post-deposition annealing on Ta2O5/Si structures. A significantly thicker SiO
x
interfacial layer was formed at the Ta2O5/Si interface, if N2O was used instead of O2 for post-deposition annealing. This indicates that N2O is a stronger oxidizing agent than O2. It is known that the leakage current of Ta2O5 capacitors is greatly reduced if N2O is used instead of O2 for post-deposition annealing. This may also be partially explained by postulating that N2O annealing is more effective in the suppression of oxygen vacancies. Furthermore, the suppression of Si diffusion from the Si substrate into Ta2O5 due to the thicker SiO
x
interfacial layer can be another factor. The basic reason for the superiority of N2O is that the energy required to produce free O atoms is lower than that for O2. From this point of view, we can also predict that the use of NO will be worse than that of O2 because the energy required to produce free O atoms is higher than that of O2.
Tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) films were deposited from the reaction of tantalum pentaethoxide (Ta(OC2H5)5) and oxygen (O2) using the Lam Research Corporation DSM™9800 advanced LPCVD reactor. Typical films were deposited at a rate of 0.9 – 1.1 nm/min at 400°C. The films were stoichiometric with an O/Ta ratio of 2.57/1.00 and excellent compositional uniformity. Conformity was >95% indicating that the process is surface reaction rate limited. Films with non‐uniformities <2.2% were deposited on 300 mm wafers. The deposited non‐uniformity on 150mm and 200mm wafers was <2.0% ‐1σ within a wafer, wafer to wafer within a batch, and batch to batch. The dielectric constant for as‐deposited films was 22–24, and as high as 34 for films which were heat treated. Various post deposition heat treatments were performed to improve the capacitor's electrical properties. Superior results were obtained from rapid thermal annealing (RTA) in N2O compared with RTA in O2 and two‐step UV‐O3 followed by high temperature annealing in dry O2. Values for the leakage current of <10-8 A/cm2 at 1.2 volts negative bias (worst case) and breakdown >5 MV/cm at 1.6μΑ with tegox<2.5 nm have been obtained. These values meet the requirements for 256 Mbit DRAM memory devices Bottom and top electrode formation and integration issues are also addressed.
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