Structural and electrical properties of neodymium oxide high-k gate dielectrics

In this letter, the authors reported a high-k neodymium oxide gate dielectric grown by reactive rf sputtering. It is found that the Nd2O3 gate dielectric after annealing at 700°C exhibits excellent electrical properties such as low equivalent oxide thickness, high electric breakdown field, and almost no hysteresis and frequency dispersion in C-V curves. This indicates that annealing at 700°C treatment can prevent the interfacial layer and silicate formation, reduce a large amount of interface trap, and passivate a large amount of trapped charge at defect sites.