Structural coordination of rigidity with flexibility in gate dielectric films for sub-nm EOT Ge gate stack reliability

This paper reports a gate dielectric film design for reliability-aware as well as scalability conscious gate stacks on Ge. Initially good characteristics of Ge gate stacks do not necessarily guarantee the long-term device reliability. To overcome this big hurdle, we propose a novel concept of the rigidity control in the dielectric films with continuous random network. Ge gate stacks with initially prominent passivation and long term reliability are demonstrated experimentally. This is a new view for achieving the built-in design of gate dielectric film with reliability as well as scalability.