High- <i>k</i> perovskite gate oxide for modulation beyond 10 <sup>14</sup> cm <sup>−2</sup>
Dowon Song, Myoungho Jeong, Juhan Kim, Bongju Kim, Jae Ha Kim, Jae Hoon Kim, Kiyoung Lee, Yongsung Kim, K. Char
Abstract
Scaling down of semiconductor devices requires high- k dielectric materials to continue lowering the operating voltage of field-effect transistors (FETs) and storing sufficient charge on a smaller area. Here, we investigate the dielectric properties of epitaxial BaHf 0.6 Ti 0.4 O 3 (BHTO), an alloy of perovskite oxide barium hafnate (BaHfO 3 ) and barium titanate (BaTiO 3 ). We found the dielectric constant, the breakdown field, and the leakage current to be 150, 5.0 megavolts per centimeter (MV cm −1 ), and 10 −4 amperes per square centimeter at 2 MV cm −1 , respectively. The results suggest that two-dimensional (2D) carrier density of more than n 2D = 10 14 per square centimeter (cm −2 ) could be modulated by the BHTO gate oxide. We demonstrate an n-type accumulation mode FET and direct suppression of more than n 2D = 10 14 cm −2 via an n-type depletion-mode FET. We attribute the large dielectric constant, high breakdown field, and low leakage current of BHTO to the nanometer scale stoichiometric modulation of hafnium and titanium.