To sustain the silicon CMOS scaling beyond 100nm, an alternate gate dielectric with K > 7 is needed. The deposited high K dielectrics (metal oxides) have nonstoichiometeric composition and therefore have large electrical defects (traps) in the bulk of the dielectric and at the dielectric/semiconductor interface. In this paper, we report a novel doping method to quench traps in thin films of A1203 (K > 8). By adding small amounts of dopants such as Zirconium (Zr) or Silicon (Si), we have achieved -1 Onm thick aluminum oxide films with record low leakage current (< 10 -13A/mm2) and ultra-thin (3-5nm) aluminum oxide films with very low interface state density (-10 "/cm2-eV) at the silicordaluminum oxide interface. We propose a physics based model for the doping effect and selection of dopants for metal oxides with K > 10.
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