The electrical properties of dielectric stacks of SiO2 and Al2O3 prepared by atomic layer deposition method

We produced dielectric stacks composed of ALD SiO2 and ALD Al2O3, such as SiO2/Al2O3, Al2O3/SiO2, and SiO2/Al2O3/SiO2, and measured the leakage currents through the stacks in comparison with those of the single oxide layers. SiO2/Al2O3 shows lowest leakage current for negative bias region below 6.4 V, and Al2O3/SiO2 showed highest current under negative biases below 4.5 V. Two distinct electron conduction regimes are observed for Al2O3 and SiO2/Al2O3. Poole-Frenkel emission is dominant at the high-voltage regime for both dielectrics, whereas the direct tunneling through the dielectric is dominant at the low-voltage regime. The calculated transition voltage between two regimes for SiO2 (6.5 nm)/Al2O3 (12.6 nm) is −6.4 V, which agrees well with the experimental observation (−6.1 V). For the same EOT of entire dielectric stack, the transition voltage between two regimes decreases with thinner SiO2 layer.