Yifei Mu

Hysteresis in Lanthanide Zirconium Oxides Observed Using a Pulse CV Technique and including the Effect of High Temperature Annealing

A powerful characterization technique, pulse capacitance-voltage (CV) technique, was used to investigate oxide traps before and after annealing for lanthanide zirconium oxide thin films deposited on n-type Si (111) substrates at 300 °C by liquid injection Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). The results indicated that: (1) more traps were observed compared to the conventional capacitance-voltage characterization method in LaZrOx; (2) the time-dependent trapping/de-trapping was influenced by the edge time, width and peak-to-peak voltage of a gate voltage pulse. Post deposition annealing was performed at 700 °C, 800 °C and 900 °C in N2 ambient for 15 s to the samples with 200 ALD cycles. The effect of the high temperature annealing on oxide traps and leakage current were subsequently explored. It showed that more traps were generated after annealing with the trap density increasing from 1.41 × 1012 cm−2 for as-deposited sample to 4.55 × 1012 cm−2 for the 800 °C annealed one. In addition, the leakage current density increase from about 10−6 A/cm2 at Vg = +0.5 V for the as-deposited sample to 10−3 A/cm2 at Vg = +0.5 V for the 900 °C annealed one.

Radiation tolerant DC characteristics of InAs/GaAs quantum-dot diodes

Effects of 137Cs gamma irradiation on the DC electrical characteristics of InAs/GaAs quantum dots (QDs) mesa diodes are reported. The devices were irradiated with gamma-rays for different doses ranging from 100 rad to about 1 Mrad (GaAs). The QDs mesa diodes are found to be tolerant to γ radiation. No enhanced leakage current and shift in the turn-on voltage were observed in the InAs/GaAs QD devices after exposure to γ-radiation. When irradiated by γ-rays continuously, there seemed to be a small degradation trend in the forward-bias current after irradiating the mesa diode for about six hours.

Electrical Properties and Interfacial Studies of HfxTi1–xO2 High Permittivity Gate Insulators Deposited on Germanium Substrates

In this research, the hafnium titanate oxide thin films, TixHf1–xO2, with titanium contents of x = 0, 0.25, 0.9, and 1 were deposited on germanium substrates by atomic layer deposition (ALD) at 300 °C. The approximate deposition rates of 0.2 Å and 0.17 Å per cycle were obtained for titanium oxide and hafnium oxide, respectively. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) indicates the formation of GeOx and germanate at the interface. X-ray diffraction (XRD) indicates that all the thin films remain amorphous for this deposition condition. The surface roughness was analyzed using an atomic force microscope (AFM) for each sample. The electrical characterization shows very low hysteresis between ramp up and ramp down of the Capacitance-Voltage (CV) and the curves are indicative of low trap densities. A relatively large leakage current is observed and the lowest leakage current among the four samples is about 1 mA/cm2 at a bias of 0.5 V for a Ti0.9Hf0.1O2 sample. The large leakage current is partially attributed to the deterioration of the interface between Ge and TixHf1–xO2 caused by the oxidation source from HfO2. Consideration of the energy band diagrams for the different materials systems also provides a possible explanation for the observed leakage current behavior.

Effects of biased irradiation on charge trapping in HfO2 dielectric thin films

This paper reports the low-dose-rate radiation response of Al-HfO2/SiO2–Si MOS devices, in which the gate dielectric was formed by atomic layer deposition (ALD) with 5-nm equivalent oxide thickness. The degradation of the devices was characterized by a pulse capacitance-voltage (CV) and on-site radiation response technique under continuous gamma (γ) ray exposure at a relatively low dose rate of 0.116 rad (HfO2)/s. Compared with conventional CV measurements, the proposed measurements extract significant variations of flat-band voltage shift of the hafnium based MOS devices. The large flat-band voltage shift is mainly attributed to the radiation-induced oxide trapped charges, which are not readily compensated by bias-induced charges produced over the measurement timescales (for timescales less than 5 ms). A negative flat-band voltage shift up to −1.02 V was observed under a positive biased irradiation with the total dose up to 40 krad (HfO2) and with the electric field of 0.5 MV/cm. This is attributed to ne...

Robust electrical characteristics of multiple-layer InAs/GaAs quantum-dot diodes under gamma irradiation

To conclude, the InAs/GaAs QD devices display radiation-tolerant DC characteristics despite high total dose of gamma radiation. No permanent ionising damage to the III-V compound semiconductor devices has been observed. The off-state leakage current is not worsened even when the device is continuously irradiated by gamma radiation. The results show great promise of InAs/GaAs QD structure for realization of IR photodetectors with low noise floor and high reliability in radiation environments.