The role of carbon contamination in voltage linearity and leakage current in high-k metal-insulator-metal capacitors

The effect of carbon contamination on the electrical properties of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor using HfO2 dielectric has been reported. The HfO2 film with lower carbon contamination shows an overall high performance, such as a higher capacitance density of 5.21 fF/μm2, a lower leakage current of 1.3×10−7 A/cm2 at 1 V, lower-voltage coefficients of capacitance, and better frequency and temperature dispersion properties compared with the capacitor of theHfO2 film with higher carbon contamination. The calculated ac barrier heights by electrode polarization model from capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics are 0.58 eV for the HfO2 film with high carbon contamination and 0.95 eV for the HfO2 film with negligible carbon contamination. The dc barrier heights extracted from current-voltage (I-V) characteristics are 0.26 eV for the HfO2 film with high carbon contamination and 1.1 eV for the HfO2 film with negligible carbon contamination. All of these experimental results exhibit that the increase in defect density in HfO2 films generated from carbon impurities results in the degradation of barrier heights and poor performance of the MIM capacitor. It is important to point out that, during the fabrication process of the MIM capacitor, the carbon contamination must be minimized.