Effects of Annealing on Ferroelectric Hafnium–Zirconium–Oxide-Based Transistor Technology

In this letter, we investigate annealing effects in ferroelectric HfZrO x dielectric in metal–insulator–metal devices and metal–oxide–semiconductor capacitors by comparing two annealing methods: rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and microwave annealing (MWA). The tradeoff characteristics between the annealing conditions, polarization–electric field characteristics, gate leakage current, and interface state density ( <tex-math notation="LaTeX">D ᵢₜ </tex-math> ) are discussed. We show that: 1) a positive correlation between the remanent polarization (Pr), the gate leakage current, and <tex-math notation="LaTeX">Dᵢₜ </tex-math> as the annealing temperature (RTA) and the annealing power (MWA) increase and 2) the MWA is promising for ferroelectric transistors technology, since its low thermal budget can minimize <tex-math notation="LaTeX">Dᵢₜ </tex-math> and avoid increase in the gate leakage current.