Post deposition treatment of thin film HfO2 dielectric for increased performance in MIM capacitors

Advanced packaging techniques such as heterogeneous packaging become crucial in reducing device sizes for high performance and reliability. For this reason, we require low temperature deposition and fabrication of high-quality thin films aimed towards heterogeneous integration. We propose a simple post deposition treatment of atomic layer deposited thin film dielectrics such as HfO2 using Atmospheric Plasma and Vacuum UV to increase its electrical characteristics. We found that the leak current is reduced by 40-86% for 10-40 nm thick Ar/O2 treated HfO2. XPS analysis reveals that either post deposition treatment greatly reduced carbon contaminants, and AES depth profiling shows the atmospheric plasma increasing oxygen presence on the surface of the HfO2 film.