To improve the electrical properties of metal/insulator/metal capacitors for dynamic random access memory, the effects of the top electrode materials and their structures on the capacitor performance are examined. Three kinds of top electrode types (TiN, Ru, and TiN/Ru) are sputter-deposited on ZrO 2 / Al 2 O 3 /ZrO 2 (ZAZ) dielectric layers grown via atomic layer deposition (ALD) on TiN bottom electrodes. The TiN/Ru top electrode samples show the highest capacitance density among the three types of top electrodes, and the Ru and TiN/Ru top electrodes show less leakage current density than the TiN top electrode. The interface property is optimized when the Ru directly contacts the insulating layer due to its higher work function. The TiN layer on the 2 nm-thick Ru top electrode decreases the adverse interfacial reaction layer (TiO x N y ) of the dielectric/TiN bottom electrode through the scavenging oxygen atoms.The major electrical properties required for the capacitors in dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is a sufficiently high capacitance density with a controlled leakage current in the metal/insulator/metal (MIM) structure. The current capacitor structure in mass production is based on the ZrO 2 /Al 2 O 3 /ZrO 2 (ZAZ) dielectric layer and TiN bottom and top electrodes, which have provided DRAM with an appropriate charge storage capacity down to the %20 nm technology node. To pursue further scaling down to the 15 nm DRAM node, however, a certain material innovation is required because the simple decrease in the physical thickness of the ZAZ dielectric layer may induce the critical risk of leakage current density (J) increase. To resolve these issues, various kinds of dielectric materials with a higher dielectric constant (k) than ZrO 2 , such as TiO 2 , Al-doped TiO 2 , SrTiO 3 , and (Ba,Sr)TiO 3 , have been exploited. These new higher-k dielectrics, however, have shown optimum performance on the noble metal electrodes, such as Ru and RuO 2 , which are premature as the capacitor node electrode or bottom electrode in mass production lines compared with the current TiN. Also, their $3.0-3.3 eV bandgap energy is much smaller than the 5.1-5.5 eV bandgap energy of ZrO 2 and the %7.0 eV bandgap energy of amorphous Al 2 O 3 , making them much more vulnerable to the leakage current problem as long as the capacitor voltage remains at %1 V. [1][2][3][4] Therefore, for a more immediate solution to the problem, a new top electrode material possessing a higher work function than TiN could be sought, which may suppress the leakage current even at a thinner ZAZ thickness. It should be noted that the top electrode in DRAM is structured into the shape of a large plate, making its application