Interfacial characteristics of Al/Al₂O₃/ZnO/n-GaAs MOS capacitor

The interfacial characteristics of Al/Al₂O₃/ZnO/n-GaAs metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor are investigated. The results measured by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) show that the presence of ZnO can effectively suppress the formations of oxides at the interface between the GaAs and gate dielectric and gain smooth interface. The ZnO-passivated GaAs MOS capacitor exhibits a very small hysteresis and frequency dispersion. Using the Terman method, the interface trap density is extracted from C-V curves. It is found that the ZnO layer can effectively improve the interface quality.