Y-doped Hf-Zr-O (Y-HZO) films have been prepared by chemical solution deposition (CSD). It is shown that good ferroelectric property can be obtained for the Y- HZO film with an Y concentration of 3.2% after 800 oC crystallization annealing at a reduced pressure of 50 Pa. It is also demonstrated that the reduced pressure pre-annealing at temperatures as low as 400 oC is effective to obtain good ferroelectric properties, regardless of the crystallization annealing ambient. This is presumably because the pre-annealing under reduced pressure promotes the formation of nuclei of orthorhombic phase.
Since the discovery of ferroelectricity in HfO2 in 2011, extensive work begin to burst forth on HfO2-based ferroelectric materials and devices. Orthorhombic phase is responsible for ferroelectricity in HfO2, which is usually stabilized by the dopant such as Al, Zr, Si, la and Y. In particular, Zr doped HfO2 (HZO) has large Pr around 20 µC/cm2 and ferroelectricity can be obtained in a wide range of Zr composition. The orthorhombic phase is a metastable phase and Migita et al. [1] reported that the orthorhombic phase of sputtered HZO film was transferred to monoclinic phase by further annealing. In this work, robustness of ferroelectric phase against the further annealing process has been investigated using sputtered HZO and solution-derived Y-doped HZO films [2].
Sputtered HZO films were prepared by room temperature deposition followed by 600 oC, 10 min annealing in N2. Y-doped HZO films were prepared by chemical solution deposition (CSD) by annealing the samples at 800 oC for 3 min in O2.[2] Ferroelectric properties were confirmed by polarization-electric field (P-E) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements for both samples before the second time annealing. Then, both samples were further annealed in 400 and 600 oC in N2 to examine the robustness of ferroelectricity. It was found that sputtered HZO films become paraelectric and that X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern shows diffraction peak from orthorhombic phase disappeared. On the other hand, CSD HZO films shows ferroelectric nature even after second time annealing with negligible monoclinic phase. Such a significant difference in robustness is presumably due to residual carbon in the CSD films.
In addition, In2O3/(Y-)HZO structures are also fabricated for oxide channel thin film transistor applications and characterized, which will be presented at the conference.
[1] Shinji Migita et al, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 58 SBBA07, 2019.
[2] Mohit et al, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 59 SMMB02, 2020.
In recent years, lanthanum‐doped hafnium–zirconium dioxide (La‐HZO) has garnered attention as a material for application in ferroelectric devices; moreover, atomic layer deposition has been applied to prepare La‐HZO films with metal–ferroelectric–metal structures. This article describes the fabrication of ferroelectric La‐HZO thin films on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates via a solution process. The dependence of the electrical properties on the La concentration of La‐HZO films annealed at 800 °C in vacuum is also discussed. The film with a La concentration of 8 at% exhibits the highest remanent polarization, whereas undoped HZO exhibits paraelectric behavior. Additionally, the leakage current of La‐HZO specimens tends to be significantly lower than that of undoped HZO. Furthermore, a higher annealing temperature corresponds to better ferroelectric properties and a lower leakage current. The characterization of fabricated ferroelectric gate thin‐film transistors (FGTs) with an 8 at% La‐HZO gate insulator and indium‐tin‐oxide channel is shown to confirm typical n‐channel transistor operation, i.e., a counterclockwise hysteresis loop in the transfer curve; this is attributable to the ferroelectric nature of the La‐HZO gate insulator. The results demonstrate that the proposed FGT design offers a low subthreshold voltage swing, high on/off drain current ratio of 106, large on‐current, and large memory window.
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