Advanced high-k gate dielectric amorphous LaGdO3 gated metal-oxide-semiconductor devices with sub-nanometer equivalent oxide thickness

Careful selection of pulsed laser deposition conditions was executed to achieve sub-nanometer EOT (equivalent oxide thickness) in amorphous LaGdO3 based high-k/metal gate stacks. The lowest EOTs attained were similar to 5.4 angstrom and 8.4 angstrom with and without quantum mechanical correction, respectively. The electrical measurements yielded a high permittivity of 20.5 +/- 2.4, a thin bottom interfacial layer of thickness 4.5 +/- 1 angstrom, and interface (cm(-2) eV(-1)) and fixed (cm(-2)) charge densities of similar to 10(12). Analysis of temperature dependent leakage currents revealed that gate injection current was dominated by Schottky emission below 1.2 MV/cm and quantum mechanical tunneling above this field. The physical origin of substrate injection was found to be a combination of Schottky emission and trap assisted tunneling. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.