Performance effects of two nitrogen incorporation techniques on TaN/HfO2 and poly/HfO2 MOSCAP and MOSFET devices

In the coming MOS generations, scaling trends will force the replacement of SiO/sub 2/ as the gate dielectric. Due to constraints - primarily high gate leakage current - SiO/sub 2/ will likely be replaced by a high dielectric constant or high-k material. This paper will attempt to address some of the high-k material concerns by presenting promising results on HfO/sub 2/ stack structures with two forms of nitrogen incorporation - surface nitridation and top nitridation.