Reliability evaluation of HfSiON gate dielectric film with 12.8 /spl Aring/ SiO/sub 2/ equivalent thickness

Alternate gate-dielectric films are required for future replacement of conventional SiO/sub 2/. Replacement is needed to reduce gate-leakage while still maintaining good reliability and a high-level of transistor performance. One such candidate is HfSiON dielectric film. In this paper we report for the first time, IV and CV characteristics, stability and reliability results for amorphous HfSiON dielectric films scaled below 13 /spl Aring/. Our results show that leakage current through this material is reduced by two orders of magnitude versus an equivalent SiO/sub 2/ film, while the interface and TDDB stability remains good. The positive leakage, stability and reliability results indicate that HfSiON may be a suitable candidate for gate-oxide replacement in CMOS applications where an effective hyper-thin gate-oxide is required for performance reasons and a reduced gate-leakage for low-power applications.