Aluminum oxynitride interfacial passivation layer for high-permittivity gate dielectric stack on gallium arsenide

The authors demonstrate a passivation technique for GaAs substrate by employing an aluminum oxynitride (AlON) interfacial passivation layer. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy results show that the AlON interfacial passivation layer effectively suppresses the formation of Ga or As oxide during the gate dielectric deposition process. This enabled the fabrication of high quality GaAs n-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors with HfO2 gate dielectric and TaN metal gate electrode. The metal gate/high-k gate dielectric stack on GaAs demonstrated an equivalent SiO2 thickness of 2.2 nm and low leakage current density of 4.27x10(-4) A/cm(2) at a gate bias equal to V-fb-1 V. Excellent capacitance-voltage characteristics with low frequency dispersion (similar to 4%) were also obtained. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.