Oxygen vacancies in high dielectric constant oxide-semiconductor films.

We provide evidence that the oxygen vacancy is a dominant intrinsic electronic defect in nanometer scaled hafnium oxide dielectric films on silicon, relevant to microelectronics technology. We demonstrate this by developing a general model for the kinetics of oxygen vacancy formation in metal-ultrathin oxide-semiconductor heterostructures, calculating its effect upon the band bending and interfacial oxidation rates and showing good experimental agreement with the predictions.