Low-thermal-budget crystallization of ferroelectric Al:HfO2 films by millisecond flash lamp annealing

We report the use of a low-thermal-budget annealing technique; flash lamp annealing (FLA), which provides an extremely short annealing time in the millisecond range, on the ferroelectric properties of Al-doped HfO2 (HAO) films. HAO annealed at 1000 °C with 5 ms shows a higher remanent polarization value of 24.9 μC cm−2 compared to rapid thermal annealing (RTA), without degradation of endurance. GIXRD shows a stronger peak intensity originating from the orthorhombic (o-) phase and is observed when using FLA, indicating the formation of a larger amount of the o-phase. We believe that this is a consequence of the low thermal budget of FLA, and that specifically FLA can minimize the relaxation of the compressive stress in the TiN electrodes, inducing a high tensile stress to the HAO films and therefore an enhancement of o-phase formation. These results indicate that FLA is a promising annealing method for HAO crystallization due to the enhancement of o-phase formation.