Initial reaction of hafnium oxide deposited by remote plasma atomic layer deposition method

A remote plasma atomic layer deposition (RPALD) method has been applied to grow a hafnium oxide thin film on the Si substrate. The deposition process was monitored by in situ XPS and the as-deposited structure and chemical bonding were examined by TEM and XPS. The in situ XPS measurement showed the presence of a hafnium silicate phase at the initial stage of the RPALD process up to the 20th cycle and indicated that no hafnium silicide was formed. The initial hafnium silicate was amorphous and grew to a thickness of approximately 2 nm. Based on these results and model reactions for silicate formation, we proposed an initial growth mechanism that includes adatom migration at nascent step edges. Density functional theory calculations on model compounds indicate that the hafnium silicate is thermodynamically favored over the hafnium silicide by as much as 250 kJ/mol