High-Performance Thin-Film Transistor with Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD)-Derived Indium-Gallium Oxide Channel for Back- End-of-Line Compatible Transistor Applications: Cation Combinatorial Approach

In this paper, the feasibility of an indium-gallium oxide (In2(1-x)Ga2xOy) film through combinatorial atomic layer deposition (ALD) as an alternative channel material for back-end-of-line (BEOL) compatible transistor applications is studied. The microstructure of random polycrystalline In2Oy with a bixbyite structure was converted to the amorphous phase of In2(1-x)Ga2xOy film under thermal annealing at 400 degrees C when the fraction of Ga is >= 29 at. %. In contrast, the enhancement in the orientation of the specialIntscript face and subsequent grain size was observed for the In1.60Ga0.40Oy film with the intermediate Ga fraction of 20 at. %. The suitability as a channel layer was tested on the 10-nm-thick HfO2 gate oxide where the natural length was designed to meet the requirement of short channel devices with a smaller gate length (<100 nm). The In1.60Ga0.40Oy thin-film transistors (TFTs) exhibited the high field-effect mobility (mu FE) of 71.27 +/- 0.98 cm2/(V s), low subthreshold gate swing (SS) of 74.4 mV/decade, threshold voltage (VTH) of -0.3 V, and ION/OFF ratio of >108, which would be applicable to the logic devices such as peripheral circuit of heterogeneous DRAM. The in-depth origin for this promising performance was discussed in detail, based on physical, optical, and chemical analysis.

Automated summary

This paper explores the feasibility of using an indium-gallium oxide film as an alternative channel material for back-end-of-line compatible transistor applications. Thermal annealing was found to convert the microstructure of random polycrystalline indium oxide to an amorphous phase of the indium-gallium oxide film. The study also reveals that the indium-gallium oxide film exhibits improved orientation and grain size at specific doping ratios.