Vol 45, No 4 (2016)

The physical and chemical foundations of the atomic layer deposition (ALD) process, the advantages of ALD technology, and possible applications for further miniaturizing and improving the performance of semiconductor devices are considered. The results of the atomic layer deposition of the advanced nanoelectronic material hafnium oxide are discussed. The dielectric characteristics’ measurements and microstructure analysis results are given.

Using secondary ion mass spectrometry, we investigate the oxidation of titanium nitride films fabricated by reactive magnetron sputtering under specific conditions of burning plasma in the argon and oxygen mixture in a vacuum chamber of a magnetron sputtering facility at annealing temperatures ranging from 350 to 440°С and times ranging from 2 to 11 min. It is shown that the oxidation is activated by the plasma, while thermal activation plays a secondary role. The oxide layer consists of the TiO₂ layer and (3–5)-nm-thick intermediate layer between it and the bulk of titanium nitride, which is homogeneous over the sample surface and enriched with oxygen-containing complexes. The titanium dioxide layer thickness lies within 2–3.5 nm and depends on the annealing conditions. The effect of different factors on the layer thicknesses is investigated. The expression is obtained that satisfactorily describes the dependence of the TiO₂ layer thickness on annealing temperature and time.

The structural and electrical properties of materials based on hafnium oxide grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) are analyzed. The possibility and prospects of the use of their nanoscale films in nonvolatile memory are considered. The possibility of scaling Ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) to subμm dimensions while preserving the ferroelectric properties is shown.

The kinetics of the creation and annihilation of neutral particles in HCl and HBr plasmas under the conditions of standard industrial etching reactors is simulated. It is established that the two systems have similar kinetic schemes and exhibit only quantitative differences in plasma compositions. It is show that the HBr plasma is characterized by higher degrees of dissociation of the initial molecules and bromine atomic concentrations in the same temperature and electron concentration ranges.

This study is devoted to the development of a method for the registration of multiple-cell upsets (MCUs) in memory cells induced by single nuclear particles. The presented results illustrate the possibility of finding MCUs in high capacity (higher than 1 Mbit) memory cells using the improved method.