Characteristics of cerium oxide for metal-insulator-metal capacitors

In this article, we describe our successful fabrication of a Ce O ₂ metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor with a low voltage nonlinearity. A low leakage current of 3.9× 10^-7 A/ cm ² at -1 V and a small VCC-^α∼421 ppm/ V ² were obtained at a high 10.8 fF/μ m² density for a Pt/Ce O₂ /TaN MIM capacitor. The small VCC-α for a 15 nm thick Ce O₂ dielectric (κ∼20) was much better than the reported dielectrics of Hf O₂, Tb-Hf O₂, and Al₂ O ₃ -Hf O₂ at a similar κ -value (15-20). The good analog performance was due to the combined effect of the Ce O₂ dielectric and the high work-function metals.