Characteristics of Cerium Oxide for Metal-Insulator-Metal Capacitors

In this article, we describe our successful fabrication of a CeO2 metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor with a low voltage nonlinearity. A low leakage current of 3.9 X 10(-7) A/cm(2) at -1 V and a small VCC-alpha similar to 421 ppm/V-2 were obtained at a high 10.8 fF/mu m(2) density for a Pt/CeO2/TaN MIM capacitor. The small VCC-alpha for a 15 nm thick CeO2 dielectric (kappa similar to 20) was much better than the reported dielectrics of HfO2, Tb-HfO2, and Al2O3-HfO2 at a similar kappa-value (15-20). The good analog performance was due to the combined effect of the CeO2 dielectric and the high work-function metals. (C) 2009 The Electrochemical Society. [DOI: 10.1149/1.3258042] All rights reserved.