Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Rare-earth Oxides Precursors

The rare-earth oxides M2O3 (M=La, Pr, Gd) are good insulators due to their large band gap (3.9eV for Pr2O3, 5.6eV for Gd2O3), they have high dielectric constants (Gd2O3 K=16, La2O3 K=27, Pr2O3 K=26-30) and, compared to ZrO2 and HfO2, they have higher thermodynamic stability on silicon making them very attractive materials for high-K dielectric applications. Another attractive feature of some rare-earth oxides is their relatively close lattice match to that of silicon, offering the possibility of epitaxial growth and eliminating problems related to grain boundaries in polycrystalline films. Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) has been preferred to PVD methods because of the possibility of large area deposition, good composition control and excellent conformal step coverage. Herein we report on the synthesis of rare-earth oxide complexes with designed alkoxide and aminoalkoxide ligand. These novel complexes have been characterized by means of FT-IR, elemental analysis, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA).