Pyroelectric and Ferroelectric Properties of Hafnium Oxide Doped with Si via Plasma Enhanced ALD

Devices based on ferroelectric hafnium oxide are of major interest for sensor and memory applications. In particular, Si-doped hafnium oxide layers are investigated for the application in the front-end-of-line due to their resilience to high thermal treatments. Due to its very confined doping concentration range, Si:HfO2 layers based on thermal atomic layer deposition often exhibited a crossflow pattern across 300 mm wafer. Here, plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition is explored as an alternative method for producing Si-doped HfO2 layers, and their ferroelectric and pyroelectric properties are compared.