Effects of Ti content and wet-N2 anneal on Ge MOS capacitors with HfTiO gate dielectric

Thin HfTiO gate dielectric is deposited by reactive co-sputtering method followed by wet or dry N₂ anneal. The effects of Ti content on the performance of HfTiO gate dielectric are investigated by using different sputtering powers for the Ti target. Experimental results indicate that as the Ti content increases, the dielectric constant (κ) can increase up to 40 for a Ti content of 28%. However, when the Ti content is too high, the interface properties and gate leakage properties are deteriorated. On the contrary, results show that owing to the hydrolyzable property of GeO_x, the wet-N₂ anneal can greatly suppress the growth of unstable low-κ GeO_x interlayer, resulting in lower interface-state density and gate leakage current, in addition to larger κ value. In this study, when the sputtering power of the Ti target is 80 W together with a 25-W power for the Hf target and a post-deposition anneal (PDA) in wet-N₂ ambient at 500 °C for 300 s, excellent device performance is achieved: equivalent oxide thickness of 0.72 nm, equivalent dielectric constant of 39, interface-state density of 6.5 × 10¹¹ eV⁻¹ cm⁻² and gate leakage current of 5.7 × 10⁻⁴ A/cm² at V_g = 1 V. Therefore, in order to obtain high-quality HfTiO gate dielectric for small-scaled Ge MOS devices, not only should the Ti content be optimized, the PDA should also be done in a wet-N₂ ambient.