Thermally evaporated ZrO2

The characteristics of zirconium oxide (ZrO2) films, grown by standard thermal evaporation of zirconium while adding oxygen at constant partial pressure during evaporation, were investigated for the first time. The physical thickness (t(phys) in Angstrom) and electrical thickness of the as-grown and annealed samples were studied. The dielectric constant as measured by the capacitance-voltage (C-V) technique is estimated to be around 36. C-V measurements taken at 100 kHz show a low hysteresis of similar to30 mV and the maximum capacitance seems to flatten out for the lower physical thickness, which might indicate presence of an interfacial oxide/silicate layer. (C) 2004 The Electrochemical Society.