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Alternative dielectrics to silicon dioxide for memory and logic devices

Nature volume 406, pages 1032–1038 (2000)Cite this article

The silicon-based microelectronics industry is rapidly approaching a point where device fabrication can no longer be simply scaled to progressively smaller sizes. Technological decisions must now be made that will substantially alter the directions along which silicon devices continue to develop. One such challenge is the need for higher permittivity dielectrics to replace silicon dioxide, the properties of which have hitherto been instrumental to the industry's success. Considerable efforts have already been made to develop replacement dielectrics for dynamic random-access memories. These developments serve to illustrate the magnitude of the now urgent problem of identifying alternatives to silicon dioxide for the gate dielectric in logic devices, such as the ubiquitous field-effect transistor.

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Figure 1: Schematic showing the continual increase in device density as the minimum feature size of the lithography is reduced.
Figure 2: Plots of the current densities flowing between gate contact and channel through a SiO2 dielectric, for various thicknesses of SiO2 dielectric, as a function of applied voltage.
Figure 3: Schematic showing two types of DRAM architecture, adapted from ref. 11.
Figure 4: Plots of permittivity of (Ba0.7Sr0.3)TiO3 (BST) produced by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) as a function of the (Ba+Sr)/Ti stoichiometry.
Figure 5: Schematic cross-section of a field effect transistor (FET) drawn to scale3.
Figure 6: The compositional dependence of the crystallization temperature of a, La2O3–SiO2 alloy thin films, and b, HfO2–SiO2 alloy thin films.

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Acknowledgements

Research by the authors on the topic of dielectrics for DRAMs and gate dielectrics is funded by SRC and Sematech. Research results contributed by students D. Wicaksana and J. Parrette are gratefully acknowledged. Some data presented are from research undertaken by the US Ultradense Capacitor Materials Processing Partnership. Thanks to C. Parker and C. Osburn for assistance with the figures, and to R. Amos (IBM) for a critical reading of the manuscript. S.K.S. acknowledges support by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Material Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 27695, North Carolina, USA

    Angus I. Kingon & Jon-Paul Maria

  2. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, 60439 , Illinois, USA

    S. K. Streiffer

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  1. Angus I. Kingon
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Correspondence to Angus I. Kingon.

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Kingon, A., Maria, JP. & Streiffer, S. Alternative dielectrics to silicon dioxide for memory and logic devices . Nature 406, 1032–1038 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35023243

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