Impact of the SiO₂ interface layer on the crystallographic texture of ferroelectric hafnium oxide

Applying transmission Kikuchi diffraction (TKD) allows us to fundamentally investigate the Si-doped-hafnium-oxide (HSO) microstructure that results from interface layer present in ferroelectric field-effect transistors. In addition predominant orthorhombic phase, dendritic HSO grains larger than 100 nm govern composition. Furthermore, observed strong out-of-plane texture aligned along [110] and [011] axis clearly differs features found hafnium oxide thin films grown on TiN layers. Our TKD analysis shows intensity strongly varies for samples annealed at different temperatures. Additionally, intra-granular misorientation chemical composition analyses of layers provide insight into crystallization process these films.