Performance Improvement of sol-gel prepared cerium oxide as gate oxide on Si MOS with various volumes of the chelating agent

In this study, a cerium oxide (CeO
2
) thin film on Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) structure was prepared by sol-gel method. Cerium nitrate (Ce(NO
3
)
3
·6H
2
O) powder and isopropanol solution was used as the coating solution and various chelating agent (glacial acetic acid) volumes of 0, 2, 3, 4, and 5 ml were mixed in hit to prepare CeO
2
films, and annealed with oxygen for 1 hour. The electrical characteristics were measured to examine the film qualities, including oxide capacitance (C
ox
), leakage current density, k value, equivalent oxide thickness (EOT), effective oxide charge density (Q
EFF
), and interface density (D
it
). The corresponding values are 79.1 pF, 6.4×10
^-4
A/cm
²
at +5V, 24, 30.9 nm, 2.03×10
¹¹
cm
^-2
, and 1.93 × 10
¹¹
cm
^-2
eV
^-1
, respectively. Based on these data, it can be considered that CeO
2
thin films by sol-gel method on Si exhibit a good quality and can be used as an advanced gate oxide on MOS structure in the near future.