(Digital Presentation) Study on the Electrical Characteristics and Band Diagrams of Ga2O3 MOS Gate Stacks
Authors: Kita Koji 
Published: July 2022

β-Ga2O3 is expected as one of the candidate materials for high-efficient and cost-effective power devices for high-voltage applications [1]. For the fabrication of MOSFETs the understanding of band diagrams of MOS structure is inevitably important. However, the previous reports on band alignments of β-Ga2O3 and various dielectrics including Al2O3 and SiO2 are controversial with significant inconsistencies in their values [2]. Since the ideal band diagram referring to the vacuum level is not clarified we cannot tell the Fermi level of β-Ga2O3 and the flat-band voltage (Vfb) shift of MOS capacitors. In this study we fabricated MOS structures and its band diagram was investigated from photoelectron spectroscopy.

We employed SiO2 as the gate dielectric. Single crystalline β-Ga2O3 (001) wafers with ~2×1016 cm-3 n-type doped epitaxial layers were cleaned in diluted HF solution. Then SiO2 films were deposited by electron-beam evaporation of Si in O2 ambient of ~1×10-2 Pa, followed by post-deposition annealing (PDA) in 1 atm-O2 at various temperatures. Au was evaporated as gate electrode to form MOS capacitors. Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) was conducted to determine the energy level of the valence band edge on the surface of β-Ga2O3 epitaxial layer referring to the vacuum level. The valence band spectrum of ~4nm-thick SiO2/β-Ga2O3 was also investigated by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to determine the valence band offset at the interface.

From C-V characteristics of MOS capacitors with different PDA conditions, the higher PDA temperature was found to be beneficial to achieve nearly-ideal C-V characteristics. A negligibly-small hysteresis was obtained for the one fabricated with O2-PDA at 1000℃ [3]. The energy profiles of interface state density (Dit) were determined by conductance method for the samples of different PDA conditions. The values of Dit decreased for higher PDA temperature down to ~1010 cm-3 at the energy level of EC−0.2 eV [3]. These values are significantly lower than typically reported ones for ALD-Al2O3 MOS structures on β-Ga2O3 [4]. The additional annealing at low temperature at 400℃ works for the further reduction of hysteresis to less than 1 mV/nm.

Next the band diagrams of the MOS structures were investigated. From the UPS spectra we could deduce the energy level of valence band edge referring to the vacuum level, from the difference between minimum (cut-off) and maximum edges of the obtained kinetic energy spectra of photoelectrons. We also evaluated the valence band offset from the deconvolution of the valence band XPS of thin SiO2/β-Ga2O3 stack. From the energy edge difference between the deconvoluted spectra corresponding to SiO2 and Ga2O3, respectively, the valence band offset ~1.1 eV was deduced, which is not conflicting with the estimated valence band edge energy of Ga2O3 and the well-reported valence band edge energy of SiO2. The conduction band edge energy was also estimated assuming the bandgap of β-Ga2O3 (4.7eV) [1]. Considering the Fermi-level of β-Ga2O3 with n-type doping of ~2×1016 cm-3
was approximated to be ~0.1 eV from the conduction band edge, the Fermi-level on the surface of β-Ga2O3 epitaxial layer after 1000℃ O2 annealing was estimated to be 3.6-3.7eV below the vacuum level [5]. Note that this value would be significantly smaller than the one simply estimated from the previously reported electron affinity of Ga2O3 [6].

Finally the Vfb shifts were investigated for the MOS capacitors fabricated with O2 annealing at 1000℃ with various thicknesses, referring to the ideal flat-band voltage determined with the Fermi-level of β-Ga2O3 as discussed above and the work function of Au electrode which was also determined with UPS measurement. As a result, we found the most of the Vfb values were around the ideal flat-band voltage irrespective of the film thickness from 20 to 60 nm, which indicates a small density of fixed charges <2×1011 cm-2 [5].

In conclusion, we found that SiO2/β-Ga2O3 (001) MOS capacitors showed nearly-ideal electrical characteristics with small fixed charge density by applying O2-PDA at 1000℃. The band diagram for the MOS stacks referring to the vacuum level was clarified by photoelectron spectroscopy, which enables us to understand the β-Ga2O3 MOS interface properties correctly.

References:

[1] S. J. Pearton et al., Appl. Phys. Rev. 5, 011301 (2018).

[2] P. H. Carey IV et al., Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 56, 071101 (2017).

[3] K. Kita, E. Suzuki and Q. Mao, ECS Trans. 92, 59 (2019).

[4] M. Hirose et al., Microelec. Eng., 216, 111040 (2019).

[5] D. Takeda and K. Kita, International Workshop on Dielectric Thin Films for Future Electron Devices: Science and Technology, Nov. 2021.

[6] M. Mohamed et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 101, 132106 (2012).