Defect Transport of High K Dielectrics

Despite the large amount of effort that has been invested toward high-k gate dielectrics, many of the critical properties of these materials still are known to have deleterious effects on device performance. These effects include Coulombic and remote phonon scattering, which both cause channel mobility degradation. In addition, defect bands in the materials can lead to undesired transport mechanisms and polarity effects on the leakage and reliability. A review of the measurement techniques best suited to better understand these phenomena will be presented, as well as data supporting the underlying causes of the observed transport and scattering effects that remain a key issue for high-k gate dielectrics.

Eduard Albert Cartier was born in the town of Oensingen in the Canton of Solothurn in Switzerland on February, 13 1951. He attended primary, secondary and high school in Oensingen from 1958 to 1966. In November of 1966 he entered the catholic boarding school "Collegium Maria Hilf" in Schwyz, Switzerland, where he earned a bachelors degree (Maturitaet Typus C) in June of 1971. After two years of military service in the Swiss Army he entered the masters program of mathematics and physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland and obtained a masters degree in November of 1977. In his master thesis he studied the electronic structure of metallic glasses using high resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and inverse photoelectron spectroscopy. He continued his studies in solid state physics at ETH and received a Ph.D degree (Dr.sc.nat., granted with honor) in March of 1982. The theses reported on the electronic structure and on atomic defects in graphite intercalation compounds and in metallic glasses as measured with positron annihilation techniques. He received the silver medal of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology for his outstanding Ph.D thesis. During his Ph.D. theses he was an employ of the Laboratory of Solid state Physics at ETH with teaching obligations on the undergraduate level (Assistant I). After the Ph.D. theses he continued working at ETH in new function as research assistant (Assistant II) until February of 1984. From March of 1984 till November of 1987 he worked as a research staff member at the ASEA Brown Boweri (ABB) Research Center in Baden-Dattwil, Switzerland. While at ABB, his research centered around hot carrier transport in organic materials such as saturated long chain hydrocarbons and polymers and around dielectric breakdown of polymer insulators in high power applications. Since November of 1988, he works as a research staff member of the IBM Research Division at the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heigths, NY, USA. His research activities at the T.J. Watson Research Center concentrated around hot carrier transport in silicon and silicon dioxide and around hot carrier induced oxide degradation relevant to FET and nonvolatile memory device operation and on the understanding of basic processes relevant to oxide degradation and dielectric breakdown. Of particular interest to him was the investigation of the role played by atomic hydrogen in the hot-carrier-induced oxide degradation processes. He obtained several IBM internal awards for outstanding contributions in the field of hot carrier transport in insulators and in the field of oxide reliability predictions for electronic devices. Over the last five years he has been working on the development of alternative, high-k gate dielectrics for CMOS applications, spending two years (May 2002 to May 2003) at IMEC in Belgium working as IBM assignee to SEMATECH/IMEC high-k program.