Combinatorial CVD of zirconium, hafnium, and tin dioxide mixtures for applications as high-k materials

A low-pressure CVD reactor was modified to create continuous compositional spreads of ZrO2/HfO2/SnO2 on a single Si(100) wafer. Anhydrous metal nitrates were used as single-source precursors to grow the films, and the compositions were mapped using Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS). An array of 100 x 100 mum(2) capacitors was used to map the dielectric constant. High dielectric constants were observed for the films having high ZrO2 concentrations, while high SnO2 concentrations correlated with low values of kappa.