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Deposition of TiO2/Al2O3 bilayer on hydrogenated diamond for electronic devices - Capacitors, field-effect transistors, and logic inverters

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2017-06-08
JournalJournal of Applied Physics
AuthorsJiangwei Liu, Meiyong Liao, Masataka Imura, Ryan G. Banal, Yasuo Koide
InstitutionsNational Institute for Materials Science
Citations62

The wide bandgap semiconductor diamond has been studied to develop high-power and high-frequency electronic devices. Here, high dielectric constant (high-k) TiO2/Al2O3 bilayers are deposited on hydrogenated diamond (H-diamond) channel layers using sputter deposition (SD) and atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques. Thin ALD-Al2O3 films are employed as buffer layers for the SD-TiO2 and ALD-TiO2 on H-diamond to suppress plasma discharge effect and to decrease leakage current density (J), respectively. The electrical properties of the resulting TiO2/Al2O3/H-diamond metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors, MOS field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), and MOSFET logic inverters are investigated. With the same thickness (4.0 nm) for ALD-Al2O3 buffer layer, the ALD-TiO2/ALD-Al2O3/H-diamond MOS capacitor shows a lower J and better capacitance-voltage characteristics than the SD-TiO2/ALD-Al2O3/H-diamond capacitor. The maximum capacitance of the ALD-TiO2/ALD-Al2O3/H-diamond capacitor and the k value of the ALD-TiO2/ALD-Al2O3 bilayer are 0.83 ÎŒF cm−2 and 27.2, respectively. Valence band offset between ALD-TiO2 and H-diamond is calculated to be 2.3 ± 0.2 eV based on the element binding energies measured using an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy technique. Both the SD-TiO2/ALD-Al2O3/H-diamond and ALD-TiO2/ALD-Al2O3/H-diamond MOSFETs show p-type, pinch-off, and enhancement mode characteristics with on/off current ratios around 109. The subthreshold swings of them are 115 and as low as 79 mV dec−1, respectively. The ALD-TiO2/ALD-Al2O3/H-diamond MOSFET logic inverters, when coupled with load resistors, show distinct inversion characteristics with gains of 6.2-12.7.