This study was designed to evaluate the effect of temperature on the formation of oxide and nitride thin films for a number of different materials systems, including high-k dielectrics, nitrides and transparent conducting oxides.

High K dielectric thin films were pulse laser deposited on silicon and the interfacial layer between the film and substrate was characterized as to the extent of its growth relative to oxygen partial pressure and thickness. X-ray reflectivity and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy were used to show that there was excess physisorbed oxygen within the film. It was also shown that silicon diffuses through the growing film, especially during the initial stages of film growth, causing the formation of a poor quality interfacial layer.

Passivation treatments of the high-k thin films included the pre-treatments of depositing silicon nitride by photodeposition with UV light. The use of UV light has the effect of lowering the deposition temperature to 300 degrees to grow equivalent film thickness as that obtained by thermal nitridation at significantly higher temperatures. Silicon nitride pre-treatments before film deposition had the dual effects of raising the capacitance of the interfacial layer and decreasing the thickness of the interfacial layer. In addition to this, the silicon nitride acts as a diffusion barrier to the movement of silicon into the growing film and metal and oxygen to the lower interface.

Films that were processed with a high-temperature hydrogen anneal displayed a very thin interfacial layer and had the effect of passivating the film from thermal oxide formation. This allowed an increase in capacitance of the film relative to films that had no hydrogen pretreatment.

Indium tin oxide films were processed using mercury-lamp assisted pulsed laser deposition. It was found that the use of UV lowered the deposition temperature and increased the crystallinity of the film and that UV has the advantage of increasing nucleation density during film formation, which leads to the resulting high grain microstructure at the same temperature. High quality films were deposited at a low temperature that had optical properties that were comparable to some of the best values produced in the literature at higher temperatures. It was also found that increased crystallinity led to lower electrical resistivity values in the films.