IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Thin Films Tuesday Sessions
       Session TF-TuP

Paper TF-TuP10
Electrical, Optical and Structural Properties of Sol-gel Deposited Tantalum Oxide Thin Films

Tuesday, October 30, 2001, 5:30 pm, Room 134/135

Session: Microstructure, Oxides, and Optical Properties Poster Session
Presenter: M.J. Alam, Dublin City University, Ireland
Authors: M.J. Alam, Dublin City University, Ireland
D.C. Cameron, Dublin City University, Ireland
M.S.J. Hashmi, Dublin City University
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Because of its wide field of applications in semiconductor sciences, tantalum oxide (Ta@sub2@O@sub5@) has been extensively studied both experimentally and theoretically over the past three decades. Tantalum oxide films are of considerable interest in optical and optoelectronic technology. Tantalum oxide film is a promising candidate as a capacitor dielectric in high-density dynamic random-access memories (DRAMs) and in ultra-large-scale integrated devices (ULSI) due to its high dielectric constant (about 25) compared with that of only 3.9 for SiO@sub2@. @paragraph@ To date, tantalum oxide films have been deposited using a variety of deposition techniques, such as, thermal oxidation, electron beam evaporation, reactive evaporation, reactive sputtering, pulsed laser deposition and chemical vapor deposition, as well as the sol-gel method. Recently, the preparation of tantalum oxide films by a sol-gel process has received increased attention. This technique has many advantages, such as low temperature processing, simple and compact equipment, deposition on a substrate of large area and a complex structure and high homogeneity of the deposited films. @paragraph@ Thin homogeneous tantalum oxide films have been prepared on silicon and glass substrates using a sol-gel process. The coating solutions were prepared using Ta(OC@sub2@H@sub5@)@sub5@ as a precursor. X-ray diffraction studies determined that the sol-gel films, annealed at temperatures below 400°C were amorphous. Films annealed at higher temperatures were crystalline with the hexagonal structure. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was employed to examine the elemental content during the process. Ellipsometry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, capacitance-voltage and current-voltage measurements were also employed to characterize the tantalum oxide films annealed at different temperature in different atmospheres.