Greatly improved interfacial passivation of in-situ high κ dielectric deposition on freshly grown molecule beam epitaxy Ge epitaxial layer on Ge(100)

A high-quality high-κ/Ge interface has been achieved by combining molecule beam epitaxy grown Ge epitaxial layer and in-situ deposited high κ dielectric. The employment of Ge epitaxial layer has sucessfully buried and/or removed the residue of unfavorable carbon and native oxides on the chemically cleaned and ultra-high vacuum annealed Ge(100) wafer surface, as studied using angle-resolved x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Moreover, the scanning tunneling microscopy analyses showed the significant improvements in Ge surface roughness from 3.5 Å to 1 Å with the epi-layer growth. Thus, chemically cleaner, atomically more ordered, and morphologically smoother Ge surfaces were obtained for the subsquent deposition of high κ dielectrics, comparing with those substrates without Ge epi-layer. The capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics and low extracted interfacial trap density (Dit) reveal the improved high-κ/Ge interface using the Ge epi-layer approach.