Integration of crystalline orientated γ-Al2O3 films and complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor circuits on Si(1 0 0) substrate

• We have investigated CMOS compatibilities of crystalline γ-Al2O3 films.
• The γ-Al2O3 films were grown on Si substrate before CMOS integration.
• We have examined the effects of annealing on γ-Al2O3/Si substrate.
• The physical models of annealing processes were investigated.
• Si3N4/TEOS films were useful to prevent reactions on γ-Al2O3/Si substrate.

In this paper, integration of crystalline orientated γ-Al2O3 films and complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) circuits on Si(1 0 0) substrate was reported. In this integration processes, crystalline γ-Al2O3 films need to be preserved their crystallinity during high temperature annealing processes of CMOS fabrication in order to prevent surface condition changes. The γ-Al2O3 films grown on Si substrates are annealed in the CMOS fabrication process conditions, drive-in annealing at 1150 °C in O2 atmosphere and wet annealing 1000 °C in H2O vapor atmosphere. Reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to characterize the crystallinity of γ-Al2O3 films after the annealing processes. Surface conditions of the films are analyzed and observed with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). As a result, RHEED patterns of the γ-Al2O3 films indicated that wet oxidation annealing was a critical process severally inferior surface condition of crystalline γ-Al2O3 films. XRD, XPS, and SEM investigation unveiled further details of the crystallinity changes on γ-Al2O3 films for each process. These results indicated passivation films were required to integrate γ-Al2O3 films with CMOS fabrication process. Therefore we proposed and introduced Si3N4/TEOS passivation films on γ-Al2O3 films in CMOS fabrication processes. At last, MOSFETs on γ-Al2O3 integrated Si(1 0 0) substrate were fabricated and characterized. The designed characteristics of MOSFETs were obtained on γ-Al2O3 integrated Si substrate.