抄録
Zirconia is one of the attractive materials as the gate dielectrics instead of conventional SiO2. Generally, the amorphous zirconia is thought to be desired due to its homogeneity of surface and structure. Zirconia is, however, easily crystallized to form the nano-sized polycrystalline structure at elevated temperature. In this study, it was investigated how and where the amorphous zirconia layer would be crystallized using by in-situ heating TEM method. At first, the nuclei of the crystalline YSZ are generated near the surface or bottom of the amorphous YSZ layer at about 380o C. Next, each nuclei grow isotropically and laterally along the in-plane direction. The surface region of the Si wafer of about 50nm was strained accompanied with the crystallization of YSZ layer along YSZ/Si interface. Finally, it stops by the contact of each crystallized regions.
