Thin Film High-k Dielectric Semiconductor Materials Development for IRFPAs

MIM (Metal-Insulator-Metal) capacitors offer a higherlevelofminiaturization,flexibilityandperformancecharacteristicsthan conventionaldiscretecapacitors.MIMCAP's have beenpreparedandcharacterizedwithdifferentkindof stacksanddielectricmaterialsinrecentyears.Theparameterssuchashighdielectricconstant,low dielectricloss,highchargestoragecapacity,andlowleakagecurrentdensityareimportantfactorsin selectingdielectricmaterial.Novati believes that the program goals to achieve charge density >80fF/um2 or >20X of current SiO2 based technology can be achieved using the proper dielectric material.The goal is to chose the right high-k dielectric semiconductor material for high performance, high sensitivity cooled IRFPA's, thereby advancing the Armys current IR imaging technology.Novati will perform ALD fabrication on blanket 200mm wafers and characterize thin film properties such as thickness, roughness, stress and refractive index for multilayer high dielectric constant dielectrics suitable for high capacitive density MIMCAP applications.Candidate high dielectric constant films include TiO2, Ta2O5, HfO2 and ZrO2 and total thickness of multilayer, laminate, stacks will be <10nm to achieve best capacitive density with already established ALD processes in Novati.