High K gate dielectrics for the silicon industry

The exponential growth of the silicon industry can be attributed to that fact that silicon has a native oxide that is silicon dioxide. With SiO/sub 2/ soon approaching fundamental limit, we must find an alternate to SiO/sub 2/ or a new switch to replace MOSFET. In this paper we focus on leading alternate gate dielectrics. We first discuss the selection criteria for alternate gate dielectrics and why it is important to have an amorphous gate dielectric. SiO/sub 2/ and aluminum oxide remain amorphous at very high temperatures. For dielectrics with K > 15 and gate power < 100mW/cm/sup 2/, it may be necessary to stabilize the amorphous phase of metal oxides by adding Al or Si into the oxide; and thus forming multi-component dielectrics such as aluminates or silicates. At present, the most critical issue facing the high K research is the reduced mobility and therefore the effective fixed charge at the dielectric/Si interface. In this paper, we also shed some light on the effective fixed charge in group-three metal oxides.