Impact of Chamber/Annealing Temperature on the Endurance Characteristic of Zr:HfO2 Ferroelectric Capacitor

Abstract

The endurance characteristic of Zr-doped HfO2 (HZO)-based metal-ferroelectric-metal (MFM) capacitors fabricated under various deposition/annealing temperatures in the atomic layer deposition (ALD) process was investigated. The chamber temperature in the ALD process was set to 120 degrees C, 200 degrees C, or 250 degrees C, and the annealing temperature was set to 400 degrees C, 500 degrees C, 600 degrees C, or 700 degrees C. For the given annealing temperature of 700 degrees C, the remnant polarization (2P(r)) was 17.21 mu C/cm(2), 26.37 mu C/cm(2), and 31.8 mu C/cm(2) at the chamber temperatures of 120 degrees C, 200 degrees C, and 250 degrees C, respectively. For the given/identical annealing temperature, the largest remnant polarization (P-r) was achieved when using the chamber temperature of 250 degrees C. At a higher annealing temperature, the grain size in the HZO layer becomes smaller, and thereby, it enables to boost up P-r. It was observed that the endurance characteristics for the capacitors fabricated under various annealing/chamber temperatures were quite different. The different endurance characteristics are due to the oxygen and oxygen vacancies in ferroelectric films, which affects the wakeup/fatigue behaviors. However, in common, all the capacitors showed no breakdown for an externally applied pulse (up to 10(8) cycles of the pulse).