Enhancement of electrical characteristics and reliability in crystallized ZrO2 gate dielectrics treated with in-situ atomic layer doping of nitrogen.

Highlights: [•] The remote plasma in-situ atomic layer doping technique under the N2 and NH3 atmospheres was used to incorporate nitrogen into the crystallized ZrO2 gate dielectrics. [•] The removal of nitrogen from ZrO2 at relatively low temperature of 450°C implies that the formation of nitrogen bonding using the remote plasma is not thermally stable in nature due to the low deposition temperature. [•] The decrease in CET may be attributed to the increment of dielectric constant in the ZrO2 layer due to the formation of Zr–N bonding as a result of the nitrogen incorporation. [•] The J g was reduced up to two orders of magnitude by the incorporation of the nitrogen because of the deactivation of the oxygen vacancies. The D it was also suppressed due to the passivation of the interfacial states by hydrogen provided by the remote NH3 plasma. [•] The interface between the high-K gate dielectrics and Si was probed by the PL spectroscopy, revealing that the hydrogen passivation caused by the remote NH3 plasma treatment is highly correlated with the PL intensity and D it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]