Analysis of HfO2 and ZrO2 as high-K dielectric for CMOS nano devices

An analysis has been made on high-K dielectrics (HfO 2 and ZrO 2) for the CMOS process up to 14 nm FAB technology node. The aim is to study the reduction in gate leakage current for Nano-scale devices. High-K Dielectric having K ≥ 20 is beneficial for CMOS Nano-devices, reducing the gate leakage current when EOT ≤ 0.5 nm. MOS structure with high-K, i.e., HfO 2 and ZrO 2 , has been simulated in SILVACO T-CAD to consider as gate stack: metal/oxide/p-Si for the different FAB nodes; 45, 32, 22 & 14 nm. SiO 2 is considered a reference to optimize the MOS structure with high-K dielectric. As a result, 7–8 times the higher physical gate oxide layer is achieved compared to SiO 2 , which has a significant impact on minimizing the gate leakage current.