N-MOSFETs Formed on Solid Phase Epitaxially Grown GeSn Film with Passivation by Oxygen Plasma Featuring High Mobility

Solid phase epitaxially grown GeSn was employed as the platform to assess the eligibility of direct O2 plasma treatment on GeSn surface for passivation of GeSn N-MOSFETs. It has been confirmed that O2 plasma treatment forms a GeSnO(x) film on the surface and the GeSnO(x) topped by in situ Al2O3 constitutes the gate stack of GeSn MOS devices. The capability of the surface passivation was evidenced by the low interface trap density (D(it)) of 1.62 × 10(11) cm(-2) eV(-1), which is primarily due to the formation of Ge-O and Sn-O bonds at the surface by high density/reactivity oxygen radicals that effectively suppress dangling bonds and decrease gap states. The good D(it) not only makes tiny frequency dispersion in the characterization of GeSn MOS capacitors, but results in GeSn N-MOSFETs with outstanding peak electron mobility as high as 518 cm(2)/(V s) which outperforms other devices reported in the literature due to reduced undesirable carrier scattering. In addition, the GeSn N-MOSFETs also exhibit promising characteristics in terms of acceptable subthreshold swing of 156 mV/dec and relatively large I(ON)/I(OFF) ratio more than 4 orders. Moreover, the robust reliability in terms small V(t) variation against high field stress attests the feasibility of using the O2 plasma-treated passivation to advanced GeSn technology.