Selected Publications - 2001:

1) Pseudopotential Study of PrO₂ and HfO₂ in Fluorite Phase

J. Dabrowski, V. Zavodinsky and A. Fleszar*

IHP Microelectronics, Im Technologiepark 25, 15236 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

* Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany

Microelectronics Reliability 41(7), 1093 (2001)

Praseodymium and hafnium oxides are prospective candidates to substitute SiO₂ in decanano MOSFET transistors. We report first ab initio pseudopotential band structure calculations for these materials. We find that fluorite phases of PrO₂ and HfO₂ have similar electronic structures. The important difference is a narrow sub-band forming the conduction band bottom in PrO₂ but absent in HfO₂. Electrons in this f-type sub-band have large masses. This explains why ultrathin epitaxial Pr oxide films have low leakage in spite of a relatively small conduction band offset (1 eV) between the oxide and the Si substrate

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