While the “clean-up” effect on III-V substrates has recently been well documented interfacial reactions during atomic layer deposition (ALD) on Ge substrates are not fully explored. The “clean-up” of Ge oxides is studied by interrupting the ALD process following individual precursor pulses for in situ monochromatic x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis. Germanium oxides are found to be reduced by TMA and water, while an interfacial GeON layer is only affected by the initial TMA pulse. Oxide free germanium surfaces behave analogously to a surface with initial native oxides since they are oxidized measurably prior to the first TMA pulse due to residual oxidants in a commercial ALD chamber.

Articles you may be interested inStructural and dielectric properties of laser ablated BaTiO3 films deposited over electrophoretically dispersed CoFe2O4 grains

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The integration of functional oxide thin-films on compound semiconductors can lead to a class of reconfigurable spin-based optoelectronic devices if defect-free, fully reversible active layers are stabilized. However, previous first-principles calculations predicted that SrTiO3 thin films grown on Si exhibit pinned ferroelectric behavior that is not switchable, due to the presence of interfacial vacancies. Meanwhile, piezoresponse force microscopy measurements have demonstrated ferroelectricity in BaTiO3 grown on semiconductor substrates. The presence of interfacial oxygen vacancies in such complex-oxide/semiconductor systems remains unexplored, and their effect on ferroelectricity is controversial. Here, we use a combination of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy and first-principles density functional theory modeling to examine the role of interfacial oxygen vacancies on the ferroelectric polarization of a BaTiO3 thin film grown on GaAs. We demonstrate that interfacial oxygen vacancies enhance the polar discontinuity (and thus the single domain, out-of-plane polarization pinning in BaTiO3), and propose that the presence of surface charge screening allows the formation of switchable domains.

High-k/InAs interfaces have been manufactured using InAs surface oxygen termination and low temperature atomic layer deposition of HfO2. Capacitance–voltage (C–V) curves revert to essentially classical shape revealing mobile carrier response in accumulation and depletion, hole inversion is observed, and predicted minority carrier response frequency in the hundred kHz range is experimentally confirmed; reference samples using conventional techniques show a trap dominated capacitance response. C–V curves have been fitted using advanced models including nonparabolicity and Fermi-Dirac distribution. For an equivalent oxide thickness of 1.3 nm, an interface state density Dit = 2.2 × 1011 cm−2 eV−1 has been obtained throughout the InAs bandgap.