Post-annealing treatment in improving high dielectric constant MgO-based metal-oxide-semiconductor diodes

Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) diodes with a high dielectric constant magnesium-oxide (MgO) insulating layer were fabricated using a magnetron radio frequency sputtering system. MgO has a high dielectric constant of approximately 11.2, which is three times higher than the dielectric constant (3.9) of silicon dioxide (SiO2), thereby ensuring a three times thicker gate oxide and reducing gate leakage current while maintaining the same capacitance density. Post-annealing treatment was employed on the MgO film to study how annealing treatment affects the electrical characteristics of MOS diodes. It was observed that the post-annealing treatment of MgO effectively diminished the gate leakage current by approximately one order, thereby increasing the rectification ratio from 8.5 × 103 to 6.8 × 104 for the MOS diodes with as-deposited and post-annealed MgO. In contrast to the MOS diodes with as-deposited MgO, the post-annealing treatment of MgO significantly decreased the flatband voltage shift from 7.8 to 1.3 V and reduced the fixed oxide charge density from 1.3 × 1012 to 2.3 × 1011 cm−2; also, the interface trap charge density was suppressed from 1.8 × 1013 to 3.2 × 1012 cm−2 eV−1. Large quantities of fixed oxide charge attracted more electrons accumulated at the Si surface, which decreased the barrier height from 0.85 to 0.81 eV for the MOS diodes with post-annealed and as-deposited MgO. Moreover, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that the oxide charges were caused by the defects inside MgO, particularly oxygen vacancies. The oxygen vacancies were compensated by the oxygen atoms introduced from the air during the post-annealing treatment.