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Growth characteristics and electrical properties of SiO2 thin films prepared using plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition and chemical vapor deposition with an aminosilane precursor

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Abstract

The deposition of high-quality SiO2 films has been achieved through the use of both plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD) and plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) methods using H2Si[N(C2H5)2]2 as a Si precursor. We systematically investigated growth characteristics, chemical compositions, and electrical properties of PE-CVD SiO2 prepared under various deposition conditions. The SiO2 films prepared using PE-CVD showed high purity and good stoichiometry with a dielectric constant of ~4. In addition, the PE-ALD process of the SiO2 films exhibited well-saturated and almost linear growth characteristics of ~1.3 Å cycle−1 without notable incubation cycles, producing pure SiO2 films. Electrical characterization of metal-oxide silicon capacitor structures prepared with each SiO2 film showed that PE-ALD SiO2 films had relatively lower leakage currents than PE-CVD SiO2 films. This might be a result of the saturated surface reaction mechanism of PE-ALD, which allows a smooth surface in comparison with PE-CVD method. In addition, the dielectric properties of both SiO2 films were further evaluated in the structures of In–Ga–Zn–O thin-film transistors, and they both showed good device performances in terms of high I on − I off ratios (>108) and low off-currents (<10−11 A). However, based on the negative bias stress reliability test, it was found that PE-ALD SiO2 showed better reliability against a negative V th shift than PE-CVD SiO2, which might also be understood from its smoother channel/insulator interface generation at the interface.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) (Project No. 10050296, Large scale (Over 8″) synthesis and evaluation technology of 2-dimensional chalcogenides for next generation electronic devices) and supported by the Industrial Strategic technology development program (10041926, Development of high density plasma technologies for thin-film deposition of nanoscale semiconductor and flexible display processing) funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE, Korea) and supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No. NRF-2014R1A2A1A11052588). Also this work was supported by Samsung Display Co., Ltd.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-Ro, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul, 03722, Republic of Korea

      Hanearl Jung, Il-Kwon Oh, Chang-Wan Lee & Hyungjun Kim

    2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, 443 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

      Woo-Hee Kim

    3. Air Liquide Korea Co., LTD., 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul, 03722, Republic of Korea

      Clement Lansalot-Matras

    4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-Ro, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul, 03722, Republic of Korea

      Su Jeong Lee & Jae-Min Myoung

    5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon, 22012, Republic of Korea

      Han-Bo-Ram Lee

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    Hanearl Jung and Woo-Hee Kim have contributed equally to this work.

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    Jung, H., Kim, WH., Oh, IK. et al. Growth characteristics and electrical properties of SiO2 thin films prepared using plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition and chemical vapor deposition with an aminosilane precursor. J Mater Sci 51, 5082–5091 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-016-9811-0

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