Water assisted atomic layer deposition of yttrium oxide using tris(,'-diisopropyl-2-dimethylamido-guanidinato) yttrium(iii): process development, film characterization and functional properties.

We report a new atomic layer deposition (ALD) process for yttrium oxide (YO) thin films using tris(,-diisopropyl-2-dimethylamido-guanidinato) yttrium(iii) [Y(DPDMG)] which possesses an optimal reactivity towards water that enabled the growth of high quality thin films. Saturative behavior of the precursor and a constant growth rate of 1.1 Å per cycle confirm the characteristic self-limiting ALD growth in a temperature range from 175 °C to 250 °C. The polycrystalline films in the cubic phase are uniform and smooth with a root mean squared (RMS) roughness of 0.55 nm, while the O/Y ratio of 2.0 reveal oxygen rich layers with low carbon contaminations of around 2 at%. Optical properties determined UV/Vis measurements revealed the direct optical band gap of 5.56 eV. The valuable intrinsic properties such as a high dielectric constant make YO a promising candidate in microelectronic applications. Thus the electrical characteristics of the ALD grown layers embedded in a metal insulator semiconductor (MIS) capacitor structure were determined which resulted in a dielectric permittivity of 11, low leakage current density (≈10 A cm at 2 MV cm) and high electrical breakdown fields (4.0-7.5 MV cm). These promising results demonstrate the potential of the new and simple YO ALD process for gate oxide applications.