Processing and performance of integrated ferroelectric and CMOS test structures for memory applications

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Abstract
The feasibility of integrating ferroelectric thin films with silicon CMOS technology was investigated by processing a ferroelectric process evaluation module which contains ferroelectric and CMOS test structures and some memory cells. The smallest cells have a ferroelectric capacitor (FECAP) of 25 μm2. The FECAPs were made with Pt/Ti electrodes and with Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 deposited by a modified sol-gel technique or by organometallic chemical vapour deposition. The back-end processing includes the insulation and interconnection of the FECAPs and the MOS transistors. The ferroelectric processing has only a slight influence on the CMOS properties. The properties of the FECAPs improve significantly by an additional anneal in oxygen. Both CMOS and FECAP properties allow a proper functioning of the memory cells. These can be reliably operated at supply voltages as low as 3 V and pulse widths down to 20 ns. The endurance of the memory cells exceeds 1013 read/write cycles.