Sol–Gel Processing and Characterization of Z-DL (Zirconium-Doped Lanthanum) Nanocrystallites for Substrate Coating

ABSTRACT As the dimensions of the MOSFETs gate dielectric are scaled down to 1 nm, resulting in high gate leakage currents due to the quantum tunneling effect, ZrxLa1-xOy can be introduced as a candidate. In the present work, ZrxLa1-xOy nanocrystallites were prepared by sol-gel method. Sol-gel solutions of ZrxLa1-xOy with Zr atomic fractions of x = 5%, 20%, and 50% were synthesized for film deposition. The nanocrystallites were characterized using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) techniques. The obtained results reveal that ZrxLa1-xOy gate dielectric can be introduced as a suitable gate dielectric for the future of nanotransistor generations due to its high-k dielectric, reduction of leakage current, as well as a tunneling current and an amorphous structure.