Thermally evaporated ZrO₂

The characteristics of zirconium oxide (ZrO₂) films, grown by standard thermal evaporation of zirconium while adding oxygen at constant partial pressure during evaporation, were investigated for the first time. The physical thickness (t_phys in Å) and electrical thickness of the as-grown and annealed samples were studied. The dielectric constant as measured by the capacitance-voltage (C-V) technique is estimated to be around 36. C-V measurements taken at 100 kHz show a low hysteresis of ∼30 mV and the maximum capacitance seems to flatten out for the lower physical thickness, which might indicate presence of an interfacial oxide/silicate layer.