Interaction of oxygen vacancies and lanthanum in Hf-based high-k dielectrics: an ab initio investigation

The interaction between oxygen vacancies and La atoms in the La doped HfO(2) dielectric were studied using first principles total energy calculations. La dopants in the vicinity of a neutral oxygen vacancy (V(O)) show lower formation energy compared to the La defects far from V(O) centres. La doping in HfO(2) leads to the shift of the defect states of oxygen vacancies towards the conduction band edge. A statistical average of this shift over several possible configurations of La atoms and V(O) shows that the incorporation of La effectively passivates the V(O) induced defect states leading to the reduction of the gate leakage current and improvement of the device reliability.