Quantum chemical simulations of atomic layer deposition of metal oxides and metal nitrides

Scaling of SiO2 gate dielectrics to extend the miniaturization of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices in accordance with Moore's Law has resulted in unacceptable tunneling current leakage levels. The projection that this challenge could significantly limit CMOS performance has prompted the intense search for alternative gate dielectric materials that can achieve high capacitances with physically thicker films which minimize tunneling leakage current.; Atomic layer deposition is an ideal deposition method for high-k films because it controls the film thickness with atomic layer precision and can achieve high film conformality and uniformity. We use density functional theory (DFT) to explore chemical reactions involved in ALD processes at the atomic level. We have investigated different metal precursors for ALD process. Compared to halides, metal alkylamides are more favorable on nitrided silicon surfaces and subsequent film growth. Likewise, hafnium alkylamide is more favorable than water to initiate the nucleation on hydrogen terminated silicon surfaces. For deposition on organic self-assembled monolayers, different end groups significantly affect the selectivity towards ALD reactions. The chemical mechanisms involved in ALD of hafnium nitride, aluminum nitride are developed which provide an understanding to the difficulty in producing oxygen free metal nitrides by ALD. By combining ALD of metal oxide and metal nitride, a new method for incorporating nitrogen into oxide films is proposed. In TMA and ozone reaction, it's found that by-product water can be a catalyzer for this reaction.