Processing and properties of ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O3/silicon carbide field-effect transistor

Metal-ferroelectric-(insulator)-semiconductor MF(I)S structures have been fabricated and the properties of pulsed laser-deposited PZT/Al-2 O-3 gate stacks have been studied on n - and p -type 4H-SiC. Among several polytypes of SiC, 4H-SiC is considered as the most attractive one because of its wider bandgap (E-g congruent to 3.2 eV) as well as higher and more isotropic bulk mobility than other polytypes. Single PZT phase without a preferred orientation was confirmed by x-ray diffraction. The interface trap densities N-IT , fixed oxide charges Q(F) , and trapped oxide charges Q HY have been estimated by C-V curves with and without photo-illuminated measurements at room temperature. It is found that the charge injection from SiC is the dominant mechanism for C-V hysteresis. Importantly, with PZT/Al-2 O-3 gate stacks, superior C-V characteristics with negligible sweep rate dependence and negligible time dependence under the applied bias were obtained compared to PZT directly deposited on SiC. The MFIS structures exhibited very stable capacitance-voltage C-V loops with low conductance (<0.1 mS/cm(2) , tan delta similar to 0.0007 at 400 kHz) and memory window as wide as 10 V, when 5 nm-thick Al2O3 was used as a high bandgap (E-g similar to 9 eV) barrier buffer layer between PZT (E-g similar to 3.5 eV) and SiC (E-g similar to 3.2 eV). The structures have shown excellent electrical properties promising for the gate stacks as the SiC field-effect transistors (FETs). Depletion mode transistors were prepared by forming a Pb(Zr-0.52 Ti-0.48 )O-3 /Al-2 O-3 gate stack on 4H-SiC. Based on this structure, ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O-3 (PZT) thin films have been integrated on 4H-silicon carbide (SiC) in a SiC field-effect transistor process. Nonvolatile operation of ferroelectric-gate field-effect transistors in silicon carbide (SiC) is demonstrated.