Characteristics of Cerium Oxide for Metal-Insulator-Metal Capacitors

Abstract

In this article, we describe our successful fabrication of a CeO(2) metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor with a low voltage nonlinearity. A low leakage current of 3.9 X 10(-7) A/cm(2) at -1 V and a small VCC-alpha similar to 421 ppm/V(2) were obtained at a high 10.8 fF/mu m(2) density for a Pt/CeO(2)/TaN MIM capacitor. The small VCC-alpha for a 15 nm thick CeO(2) dielectric (kappa similar to 20) was much better than the reported dielectrics of HfO(2), Tb-HfO(2), and Al(2)O(3)-HfO(2) at a similar kappa-value (15-20). The good analog performance was due to the combined effect of the CeO(2) dielectric and the high work-function metals. (C) 2009 The Electrochemical Society. [DOI: 10.1149/1.3258042] All rights reserved.