Chin. Phys. B Vol. 23, No. 4 (2014) 046804
Effect of ultrathin GeO
𝑥
interfacial layer formed by thermal
oxidation on Al
2
O
3
capped Ge
∗
Han Le(韩 乐)
a)b)
, Wang Sheng-Kai(王盛凯)
b)†
, Zhang Xiong(张 雄)
a)
, Xue Bai-Qing(薛百清)
b)
,
Wu Wang-Ran(吴汪然)
c)
, Zhao Yi(赵 毅)
c)
, and Liu Hong-Gang(刘洪刚)
b)‡
a)
Advanced Photonics Center, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
b)
Microwave Device and IC Department, Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China
c)
School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
(Received 3 August 2013; revised manuscript received 23 October 2013; published online 20 February 2014)
We propose a modified thermal oxidation method in which an Al
2
O
3
capping layer is used as an oxygen blocking layer
(OBL) to form an ultrathin GeO
x
interfacial layer, and obtain a superior Al
2
O
3
/GeO
x
/Ge gate stack. The GeO
x
interfacial
layer is formed in oxidation reaction by oxygen passing through the Al
2
O
3
OBL, in which the Al
2
O
3
layer could restrain
the oxygen diffusion and suppress the GeO desorption during thermal treatment. The thickness of the GeO
x
interfacial
layer would dramatically decrease as the thickness of Al
2
O
3
OBL increases, which is beneficial to achieving an ultrathin
GeO
x
interfacial layer to satisfy the demand for small equivalent oxide thickness (EOT). In addition, the thickness of the
GeO
x
interfacial layer has little influence on the passivation effect of the Al
2
O
3
/Ge interface. Ge (100) p-channel metal–
oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (pMOSFETs) using the Al
2
O
3
/GeO
x
/Ge gate stacks exhibit excellent electrical
characteristics; that is, a drain current on-off (I
on
/I
off
) ratio of above 1×10
4
, a subthreshold slope of ∼ 120 mV/dec, and a
peak hole mobility of 265 cm
2
/V·s are achieved.
Keywords: GeO
x
interfacial layer, thermal oxidation, GeO desorption, Al
2
O
3
PACS: 68.35.Ct, 73.40.Qv, 85.30.Tv DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/23/4/046804
1. Introduction
Si metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors
(MOSFETs) have reached physical and technique limitations
with device scaling. Ge has received great attention as a
promising candidate for channel material because of its high
electron and hole mobility.
[1–3]
Utilizing high-k gate stacks
can further improve the performance of Ge MOSFETs. How-
ever, the direct deposition of high-k dielectric on Ge has been
proved to show poor electrical characteristics because of re-
actions and diffusion between high-k metal oxides and Ge
surface during thermal treatment. Many efforts, such as sul-
fur passivation,
[4]
fluorine passivation,
[5]
and Si passivation,
[6]
have been made to protect the interface and reduce interfacial
trap density (D
it
). Forming a thin GeO
2
interfacial layer be-
tween high-k and Ge is one of the best solutions to improve
the interface quality, such as in the SiO
2
/Si system.
[7–9]
How-
ever, GeO
2
/Ge interface is generally considered to be defective
due to GeO desorption under high temperature. Lee et al.
[10]
have used high-pressure oxidation to suppress GeO desorp-
tion, while Zhang et al.
[11]
have taken advantage of plasma
post oxidation and maintained an ultrathin GeO
2
interfacial
layer. Meanwhile, it is significant to scale down the thick-
ness of GeO
2
layer for small equivalent oxide thickness (EOT)
due to its low k value. Other investigations, such as ozone
oxidation
[12]
and neutral beam oxidation,
[13]
have also been
carried out to form a GeO
x
interfacial layer. Nevertheless, to
obtain a well controlled thin GeO
2
layer, the most fundamental
thermal oxidation method has been seldom reported. Murad et
al.
[14]
have utilized a dilute oxidizing ambient to scale down
the thickness of GeO
2
to approximately 3 nm by using ther-
mal growth at 550
◦
C. However, it is still not enough to obtain
small EOT gate stacks to satisfy the scaling trend of Ge MOS
devices.
In this paper, we employ a thin Al
2
O
3
film as an oxygen
blocking layer (OBL) to form a thin GeO
x
interfacial layer
between Al
2
O
3
and Ge through using the modified thermal
oxidation. The thin Al
2
O
3
layer is beneficial to suppress-
ing the oxidation reaction and preventing the GeO desorption
from taking place at the GeO
x
/Ge interface.
[15]
Different ther-
mal growth conditions are investigated to optimize the con-
trol of GeO
x
interfacial layer growth, especially the thickness
of Al
2
O
3
OBL. MOS capacitors (MOSCAPs) and p-channel
MOSFETs are fabricated to investigate the electrical char-
acteristics of the Al
2
O
3
/GeO
x
/Ge gate stacks. Experimental
results demonstrate that the modified method is effective in
terms of ensuring a scaled EOT, small capacitance–voltage
(C–V ) hysteresis, and has excellent interface properties.
∗
Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant Nos. 2011CBA00605 and 2011CBA00607), the National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (Grant No. 61204103), and the National Science & Technology Major Project of China (Grant No. 2011ZX02708-003).
†
Corresponding author. E-mail: wangshengkai@ime.ac.cn
‡
Corresponding author. E-mail: liuhonggang@ime.ac.cn
© 2014 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd http://iopscience.iop.org/cpb http://cpb.iphy.ac.cn
046804-1