Effect of Annealing on the Structural and Electrical Properties of High-k Sm[sub 2]O[sub 3] Dielectrics

In this paper, the authors report a high- samarium oxide dielectric grown on the silicon substrate by reactive sputtering. We find that the gate dielectric after annealing at exhibits excellent electrical properties such as small equivalent oxide thickness, gate leakage current, frequency dispersion, and stress-induced leakage current. This indicates that annealing at treatment can prevent the interfacial layer formation, improve the surface roughness, and passivate a large amount of trapped charge at defect sites.