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Discovery of ferroelectricity in HfO2 has sparked a lot of interest in its use in memory and logic due to its CMOS compatibility and scalability. Devices that use ferroelectric HfO2 are being investigated; for example, the ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FEFET) is one of the leading candidates for next generation memory technology, due to its area, energy efficiency and fast operation. In an FEFET, a ferroelectric layer is deposited on Si, with an SiO2 layer of ∼1 nm thickness inevitably forming at the interface. This interfacial layer (IL) increases the gate voltage required to switch the polarization and write into the memory device, thereby increasing the energy required to operate FEFETs, and makes the technology incompatible with logic circuits. In this work, it is shown that a Pt/Ti/thin TiN gate electrode in a ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 based metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structure can remotely scavenge oxygen from the IL, thinning it down to ∼0.5 nm. This IL reduction significantly reduces the ferroelectric polarization switching voltage with a ∼2× concomitant increase in the remnant polarization and a ∼3× increase in the abruptness of polarization switching consistent with density functional theory (DFT) calculations modeling the role of the IL layer in the gate stack electrostatics. The large increase in remnant polarization and abruptness of polarization switching are consistent with the oxygen diffusion in the scavenging process reducing oxygen vacancies in the HZO layer, thereby depinning the polarization of some of the HZO grains.

This study describes a wide tuning-range VCO using tunable active inductor (TAI) topology and cross-coupled pair configuration for radio frequency operation. The TAI used two feedback loops to form a cascode circuit to obtain more degrees of freedom for inductance value. The TAI-VCO was fabricated using a 0.18 μm CMOS technology. The coarse frequency tuning is achieved by TAIs while the fine tuning is controlled by varactors. The fabricated circuit provides an output frequency range from 0.6 to 7.2 GHz (169%). The measured phase noise is from −110.38 to −86.01 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset and output power is from −11.11 to −3.89 dBm within the entire frequency range under a 1.8 V power supply.

The resistivity of halogen-free atomic layer deposition (ALD) TiN thin films was decreased to 220 μΩ cm by combining the use of a high-thermal stability nonhalogenated Ti precursor with a highly reactive nitrogen source, anhydrous hydrazine (N 2 H 4 ). TDMAT [tetrakis (dimethyl-amino)titanium], TDEAT [tetrakis(diethylamido)titanium], and TEMATi [tetrakis (ethylmethyl-amido)titanium] were compared to TiCl 4 as precursors for ALD TiN using N 2 H 4 as a coreactant. By minimizing the pulse length of the Ti-source precursor and optimizing the deposition temperature, the resistivity of TiN thin films deposited using these precursors was reduced to 400 μΩ cm for TDMAT (at 350 °C), 300 μΩ cm TDEAT (at 400 °C), and 220 μΩ cm for TEMATi (at 425 °C) compared to 80 μΩ cm for TiCl 4 (at 500 °C). The data are consistent with the lowest resistivity for halogen-free ALD corresponding to the organic precursor with the highest thermal stability, thereby allowing maximum ALD temperature. After optimization, TiN thin films were grown in horizontal vias, illustrating conformal and uniform TiN using both TiCl 4 and TEMATi in horizontal vias in patterned substrates.