Influence of the manufacturing process on the electrical properties of thin (<4 nm) Hafnium based high-k stacks observed with CAFM

In this work, the dependence of the electrical characteristics of some thin (<4 nm) HfO2, HfSiO and HfO2/SiO2 stacks on their manufacturing process is studied at the nanoscale. Topography, current maps and current–voltage (I–V) characteristics have been collected by conductive atomic force microscope (CAFM), which show that their conductivity depends on some manufacturing parameters. Increasing the annealing temperature, physical thickness or Hafnium content makes the structure less conductive.