Effect and Regulation Mechanism of Post-deposition Annealing on the Ferroelectric Properties of AlScN Thin Films

Integrating ferroelectric AlScN with III-N semiconductors to enhance the performance and tunability of nitride devices requires high-quality AlScN films. This work focuses on the effect and regulation mechanism of post-annealing in pure N₂ on the crystal quality and ferroelectric properties of AlScN films. It is found that the crystal quality improves with increasing annealing temperatures. Remarkably, the leakage current of AlScN films caused by grain boundaries could be reduced by four orders of magnitude after annealing at 400 °C. The crystal growth dynamics simulations and band structure calculations indicate that the energy supplied by the temperature facilitates the evolution of abnormally oriented grains to have a better c-axis orientation, resulting in the defect states at the Fermi-level disappearing, which is mainly the reason for the leakage current decrease. More interestingly, the reduction of leakage current leads to the previously leaking region exhibiting ferroelectric properties, which is of great significance to improve the ferroelectricity of AlScN and ensure the uniformity of devices. Furthermore, annealing enhances the tensile strain on the film, which flattens the energy landscape of ferroelectric switching and reduces the coercive field. However, the risk of incorporation of oxygen will also be increased if the annealing temperatures are higher than 400 °C, which will not only reduce the relative displacement of metal atoms and nitrogen atoms in AlScN but also enhance the ferroelectric depolarization field, leading to the remnant polarization decreasing dramatically. These discoveries facilitate a deeper understanding of the influencing mechanism on the ferroelectric properties of AlScN films and provide a direction for obtaining high-quality AlScN.