A Comparative Study on the Ferroelectric Performances in Atomic Layer Deposited HfZrO Thin Films Using Tetrakis(ethylmethylamino) and Tetrakis(dimethylamino) Precursors.

The chemical, physical, and electrical properties of the atomic layer deposited HfZrO thin films using tetrakis(ethylmethylamino) (TEMA) and tetrakis(dimethylamino) (TDMA) precursors are compared. The ligand of the metal-organic precursors strongly affects the residual C concentration, grain size, and the resulting ferroelectric properties. Depositing HfZrO films with the TDMA precursors results in lower C concentration and slightly larger grain size. These findings are beneficial to grow more ferroelectric-phase-dominant film, which mitigates its wake-up effect. From the wake-up test of the TDMA-HfZrO film with a 2.8 MV/cm cycling field, the adverse wake-up effect was well suppressed up to 10 cycles, with a reasonably high double remanent polarization value of ~40 μC/cm. The film also showed reliable switching up to 10 cycles with the 2.5 MV/cm cycling field without involving the wake-up effect but with the typical fatigue behavior.