Effects Of Deposition Temperature And Post Deposition Annealing On The Electrical Properties Of Barium Strontium Titanate Thin Film For Embedded Capacitor Applications

A higher degree of system level integration can be achieved by integrating the passive components into semiconductor devices, which seem to be an enabling technology for portable communication and modern electronic devices. Greater functionality, higher performance and increase in reliability can be achieved by miniaturizing and reducing the number of components in integrated circuits. The functional potential of small electronic devices can be enormously increased by implementing the embedded capacitors, resistors and inductors. This would free up surface real estate allowing either a smaller footprint or more silicon devices to be placed on the same sized substrate. This thesis focuses on the effect of deposition temperature and post deposition annealing (PDA) in different gas ambient on the electrical properties of sputter deposited ferroelectric Barium Strontium Titanate (Ba0.5St0.5) TiO3 thin film capacitors. Approximately 2000A of Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) thin film was deposited at different substrate temperatures (400,450,500 and 550[degrees]C) on cleaned silicon substrates. These BST films were then annealed separately in 100% N2, 100% O2 and 10% O2 + 90% N2 at 575[degrees]C in sputtering machine (PVD anneal) and a three zone annealing Lindberg furnace. The objective of this thesis was to compare the effect of PDA on the electrical properties of BST films deposited at different substrate temperatures between PVD annealing and furnace annealing. For this work, tantalum thin film was used as top and bottom electrode to fabricate the capacitors. BST thin film capacitors were fabricated and characterized for leakage current and dielectric breakdown. Roughness study on pre and post annealed BST films were done using optical profilometer. The capacitors were tested using HP impedance analyzer in the frequency range from 10Hz through 1 MHz. From the experiments, 100% O2 annealed furnace annealed BST thin film seem to have better dielectric constant, higher breakdown voltage and nominal capacitance density