Effect of heat treatments on electric dipole at metal/high-k dielectric interfaces measured by in situ XPS

The paper describes the application of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) based method to quantify changes in the electric dipole formed at the metal/dielectric interface following heat treatments of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) stack in different environments. The presented results on Me (Me=Au, Ni)/dielectric (dielectric=HfO"2, LaAlO"3) evidence the oxygen vacancies generated in dielectric contribute to the effective work function changes.