Study of reactive sputtering titanium oxide for metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors

Abstract Metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) capacitors with titanium oxide (TiOx) dielectric layer, deposited with different oxygen partial pressure (30, 35 and 40%) and annealed at 550, 750 and 1000 °C, were fabricated and characterized. Capacitance–voltage and current–voltage measurements were utilized to obtain, the effective dielectric constant, effective oxide thickness, leakage current density and interface quality. The obtained TiOx films present a dielectric constant varying from 40 to 170 and a leakage current density, for a gate voltage of − 1 V, as low as 1 nA/cm2 for some of the structures, acceptable for MOS fabrication, indicating that this material is a viable high dielectric constant substitute for current ultra thin dielectric layers.