• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.207.1-207.1
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• 2013

Tantalum oxide has been extensively investigated as one of the promising Resistive switching materials applicable to Resistive Dynamic Access Memories. Impedance spectroscopy offers simultaneous measurements of electrical and dielectric information, separation of electrical origins among bulk, grain boundaries, and interfaces, and the monitoring of electrical components. Such benefits have been combined with the resistive states of resistive switching devices which can be described in terms of equivalent circuits involving resistors, capacitors, and inductors, The current work employed pulsed laser deposition in order to prepare the oxygen-deficient tantalum oxide. The fabricated devices were controlled between highresistance and low-resistance states in controlled current compliance modes. The corresponding electrical phenomena were monitored both in the dc-based current-voltage characteristics and in the ac-based impedance spectroscopy. The origins of the electrical switching are discussed towards optimized ReRAM devices in terms of interfacial effects.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.610-615
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• 2022

BaTiO₃ is one of the ferroelectric materials with excellent dielectric properties such as high dielectric constant, low dielectric loss, and is widely used for the manufacturing of capacitors, piezoelectric converters, microsensors, and ferroelectric memories. Inkjet printing is a technology which uses digital and contactless methods which significantly improves flexibility associated with material and structural design, reducing manufacturing costs. Therefore, the top and bottom electrodes, BaTiO₃ ink, and photocurable resin were all printed by an inkjet to produce a BaTiO₃ capacitor. The properties of the printed thin film were analyzed. It was confirmed that the photocurable resin ink was well-infiltrated between the BaTiO₃ powder particles printed by inkjet. The dielectric properties of the capacitor such as dielectric constant which varies in accordance with frequency, polarization and tunability that changes with voltage, were measured.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.387-387
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• 2013

Currently, the flash memory and the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) have been used in a variety of applications. However, the downsizing of devices and the increasing density of recording medias are now in progress. So there are many demands for development of new semiconductor memory for next generation. Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is one of the prospective semiconductor memories with excellent features including non-volatility, fast access time, unlimited read/write endurance, low operating voltage, and high storage density. MRAM is composed of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) stack and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS). The MTJ stack consists of various magnetic materials, metals, and a tunneling barrier layer. Recently, MgO thin films have attracted a great attention as the prominent candidates for a tunneling barrier layer in the MTJ stack instead of the conventional Al2O3 films, because it has low Gibbs energy, low dielectric constant and high tunneling magnetoresistance value. For the successful etching of high density MRAM, the etching characteristics of MgO thin films as a tunneling barrier layer should be developed. In this study, the etch characteristics of MgO thin films have been investigated in various gas mixes using an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICPRIE). The Cl2/Ar, CH3OH/Ar, and CH4/Ar gas mix were employed to find an optimized etching gas for MgO thin film etching. TiN thin films were employed as a hard mask to increase the etch selectivity. The etch rates were obtained using surface profilometer and etch profiles were observed by using the field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM).

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.93-98
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• 2001

YMnO$_3$ films are excellent gate dielectric materials of ferroelectric random access memories (FRAMs) with MFSFET (metal -ferroelectric-semiconductor field effect transistor) structure because YMnO$_3$ films can be deposited directly on Si substrate and have a relatively low permittivity. Although the patterning of YMnO$_3$ thin films is the requisite for the fabrication of FRAMs, the etch mechanism of YMnO$_3$ thin films has not been reported. In this study, YMnO$_3$thin films were etched with Cl$_2$/Ar gas chemistries in inductively coupled plasma (ICP). The maximum etch rate of YMnO$_3$ film is 285$\AA$/min under Cl$_2$/(Cl$_2$+Ar) of 1.0, RF power of 600 W, dc-bias voltage of -200V, chamber pressure of 15 mTorr and substrate temperature of $25^{\circ}C$. The selectivities of YMnO$_3$ over CeO$_2$ and $Y_2$O$_3$ are 2.85, 1.72, respectively. The selectivities of YMnO$_3$ over PR and Pt are quite low. Chemical reaction in surface of the etched YMnO$_3$ thin films was investigated with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) surface of the selected YMnO$_3$ thin films was investigated with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The etch profile was also investigated by scaning electron microscopy(SEM)

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.67-67
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• 2009

Due to the scaling down of the dielectrics thickness, the leakage currents arising from electron tunneling through the dielectrics has become the major technical barrier. Thus, much works has focused on the development of high k dielectrics in both cases of memories and CMOS fields. Among the high-k materials, $Al_2O_3$ considered as good candidate has been attracting much attentions, which own some good properties as high dielectric constant k value (~9), a high bandgap (~2eV) and elevated crystallization temperature, etc. Due to the easy control of ion energy and flux, low ownership and simple structure of the inductively coupled plasma (ICP), we chose it for high-density plasma in our study. And the $BCl_3$ was included in the gas due to the effective extraction of oxygen in the form of BClxOy compound. In this study, the etch characteristic of ALD deposited $Al_2O_3$ thin film was investigated in $BCl_3/N_2$ plasma. The experiment were performed by comparing etch rates and selectivity of $Al_2O_3$ over $SiO_2$ as functions of the input plasma parameters such as gas mixing ratio, DC-bias voltage and RF power and process pressure. The maximum etch rate was obtained under 15 mTorr process perssure, 700 W RF power, $BCl_3$(6 sccm)/$N_2$(14 sccm) plasma, and the highest etch selectivity was 1.9. We used the x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to investigate the chemical reactions on the etched surface. The Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) was used for elemental analysis of etched surface.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.80-80
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• 2009

Recently, multiferroics have attracted much attention due to their numorous potentials. In this work, we attemped to utilize the multiferroics as an alternative material for ferroelectrics. Ferroelectric materials have been stadied to ferroelectric random access memories, however, some inevitable problems prevent it from inplementation. multiferroics shows a ferroelectricity and has low process temperature $BiFeO_3$(BFO) films have good ferroelectric properties but poor leakage characterization. Thus we tried, in this work, to adopt $HfO_2$ insulating layer for metal-ferroelectric-insulator-semiconductor(MFMIS) structure to surpress to leakage current. $BiFeO_3$(BFO) thin films were fabricared by using a sol-gel method on $HfO_2/Si$ structure. Ferroelectric BFO films on a p-type Si(100)wafer with a $HfO_2$ buffer layer have been fabricated to form a metal-ferroelectric-insulator-semiconductor (MFIS) structure. The $HfO_2$ insulator were deposited by using a sol-gel method. Then, they were carried out a rapid thermal annealing(RTA) furnace at $750\;^{\circ}C$ for 10 min in $N_2$. BFO films on the $HfO_2/Si$ structures were deposited by sol-gel method and they were crystallized rapid thermal annealing in $N_2$ atomsphere at $550\;^{\circ}C$ for 5 min. They were characterized by atomic force microscopy(AFM) and Capacitance-voltage(C-V) curve.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.167-167
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• 2011

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is one of the prospective semiconductor memories for next generation. It has the excellent features including nonvolatility, fast access time, unlimited read/write endurance, low operating voltage, and high storage density. MRAM consists of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) stack and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS). The MTJ stack is composed of various magnetic materials, metals, and a tunneling barrier layer. For the successful realization of high density MRAM, the etching process of magnetic materials should be developed. Among various magnetic materials, FePt has been used for pinned layer of MTJ stack. The previous etch study of FePt magnetic thin films was carried out using $CH_4/O_2/NH_3$. It reported only the etch characteristics with respect to the variation of RF bias powers. In this study, the etch characteristics of FePt thin films have been investigated using an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etcher in various etch chemistries containing $CH_4$/Ar and $CH_4/O_2/Ar$ gas mixes. TiN thin film was employed as a hard mask. FePt thin films are etched by varying the gas concentration. The etch characteristics have been investigated in terms of etch rate, etch selectivity and etch profile. Furthermore, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is applied to elucidate the etch mechanism of FePt thin films in $CH_4$/Ar and $CH_4/O_2/Ar$ chemistries.