Dielectric and structural properties of thin SrHfO3 layers on TiN

We studied several properties of thin amorphous and polycrystalline SrHfO3 layers on TiN in the context of memory capacitor applications. Amorphous SrHfO3 has the dielectric constant kappa=21 and is transformed upon rapid thermal annealing into polycrystalline SrHfO3 with kappa=35. We discuss the influence of the annealing treatment on leakage currents, and briefly discuss, on the basis of ab initio calculations, the possible role of vacancylike defects and Ti contamination.