Sol-Gel (BaxSr1-x)TiO3 thin films for microelectronic applications

• Autor(a) principal: Jie Gao
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/4812
• topic: Engenharia de materiais; Titanato de bário; Titanato de estrôncio; Materiais nanoestruturados; Microelectrónica

Dielectric, piezoelectric and ferroelectric thin films have been in the past years significantly studied because of their technological interest in a wide range of applications in the microelectronics industry. Among the several ferroelectric materials, compositions within the solid solution between the ferroelectric BaTiO3 and the quantum paraelectric SrTiO3 (Ba1-xSrx)TiO3 (BST), possess high dielectric constant and relatively low loss over a wide frequency range (till >1 GHz), low-leakage current density, a large electric field dielectric tunability and a composition dependent Curie temperature. These properties make BST thin films attractive for high density dynamic random access memories (DRAMs), and low cost agile microwave circuits, such as phase shifters, tunable filters, tunable matching network and high tuning frequency range voltage controlled oscillators. Moreover BST is a lead free perovskite making it an ideal material from the environmental point of view. These applications require the growth of high quality BST thin films, in addition to fundamental understanding of their structural and dielectric properties, which often diverge from those in equivalent bulk material. The high temperatures required for the crystallization of the perovskite BST films are not compatible with Si based large scale integrated circuits. SiO2 and/or metal silicides formation occurs when BST is deposited on silicon at temperatures above 700ºC. An underlying silicide layer reduces materials high dielectric permittivity, since silicide has lower permittivity than the perovskite oxide, reducing the film effective capacitance. At these high temperatures recrystallization of the electrode layer beneath the film (e.g. platinum layer) may occur, which can lead to hillock formation and electrical shorting of BST films. Moreover, thermal stresses generated at high temperatures might affect the long-term reliability of the device. Hence the improvement and optimization of the processing conditions of BST thin films as well as the development of low temperature processes for the fabrication of BST films are still a key aspect from the technologic point of view. Additionally, a low annealing temperature is also essential when metallic or glass substrates are required. The present master thesis addresses the investigation on the preparation of BST thin films by sol gel at temperatures lower than 700ºC. Sol-gel derived (Ba0.8Sr0.2)TiO3 thin films with improved dielectric properties were prepared at 600°C, on Pt/TiO2/SiO2/Si substrate through the use of diphasic precursor sols. BST nanometric powders were dispersed in the amorphous BST precursor sol to prepare the diphasic precursor sol and (Ba0.8Sr0.2)TiO3 thin films without and with 1 mol%, 5 mol% and 10 mol% (Ba0.8Sr0.2)TiO3 seeds were fabricated. The role of seeds was investigated and analyzed on the crystalline phase evolution, microstructure development and electrical properties of BST thin films. The improvement on the characteristics of seeded BST films when compared with unseeded films was highlighted by a comprehensive structural, microstructural and electric characterization of the films. It was shown that using perovskite BST nanopowders as seeds results in the crystallization of a single perovskite phase in BST films either at lower temperatures or at shorter annealing time when compared with the preparation of identical films without seeds. The presence of nano sized BST seeds in the film precursor sol lowers the barrier for BST nucleation and results in a high density of small crystallites in the film. XRD analysis showed that the temperature at which the perovskite phase is formed (or identified) was decreased from 650ºC to 550ºC when BST seeds were used in the precursor sols and the temperature at which the pure perovskite phase is obtained was decreased from 700ºC to 600ºC. The seeded BST films exhibit enhanced crystllization kinetics and the overall activation energy for the perovskite crystllization was reduced from 189 kJ/mol for the unseeded film to 86 kJ/mol for 1 mol% seeded BST film and to 80 kJ/mol for 5 mol% seeded film. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were employed to characterize the influence of seeds on the crystallinity, structure, microstructure, morphology and interface between BST thin films and the substrate. Both SEM and AFM surface morphology results showed that the grains of seeded films were smaller, more homogeneously distributed than unseeded ones. The surface roughness of BST films measured by AFM was decreased by the presence of BST nano seeds. TEM analysis clearly revealed that the crystallinity of BST films was enhanced with the presence of BST seeds under the same annealing conditions. The dielectric properties of BST thin films, including permittivity, loss tangent, tunability of the dielectric constant were evaluated and discussed as a function of seeds content. The dielectric constant of unseeded films annealed at 600ºC for 30 hours in oxygen were improved by the addition of 5 mol% seeds from ~300 to 400 at 1kHz, respectively. Simultaneously, the dissipation factors were decreased by the presence of 5 mol% seeds from ~0.1 to 0.07 at 1 kHz, from 0.07 to 0.01 at 1 MHz, respectively. The presence of 5 mol% seeds improved the tunability of BST films and an increment from 52% to 65% at 6 V was observed for unseeded and 5 mol% seeded BST thin films annealed at 600ºC for 30 hours in oxygen. The leakage current density of BST films with 5 mol% seeds heat treated at 600ºC for 30 hours in oxygen is 0.95×10-7 A/cm2 up to the applied voltage of 2.33 V (97 kV/cm), which was improved when compared with 0.88× 10-7 A/cm2 up to 2.02 V (84 kV/cm) measured for BST films without seeds. The value of the leakage current of both unseeded and 5 mol% seeded films meet the requirements for G-Byte DRAMs. Identically to the rest of the electrical properties, the polarization versus electric field (P-E) hysteresis was improved by the introduction of seeds. The remnant polarization Pr of BST films with 5 mol% seeds was 3.55 μC/cm2 with a coercive field of 75 kV/cm, which was considerably enhanced when compared with 1.8 μC/cm2 for BST films without seeds with a coercive field of 50 kV/cm. Corroborating the above results, piezo force microscopy (PFM) of BST seeded and non seeded thin films demonstrated the improved ferroelectric properties of BST films prepared with nanometric seeds.