The use of perovskites such as BaTiO3 as thin film ferroelectric materials in microelectronics and photonics has been limited by materials processing and compatibility problems. High quality ferroelectric thin films have not been grown at temperatures compatible with stand Si or GaAs processing technology. Considering the superb electrical and optical properties of these materials as well as their potential for use in the production of low cost DRAMs and non-volatile memory devices, the development of new thin film deposition techniques capable of producing high quality ferroelectric thin films at low temperatures is especially important. Utilizing techniques recently developed at ATM for the deposition of high temperature superconductors by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), a novel plasma- enhanced MOCVD process for the deposition of BaTiO3 at temperatures compatible with silicon processing is proposed. The specific goal of the Phase I program is to deposit a-axis oriented BaTi03 thin films on Si(100) at temperatures below 650oC by plasma enhanced MOCVD. Prototype random access memory devices based on BaTiO3 ferroelectric capacitor storage cells will be fabricated and tested in Phase II. Lifetimes in excess of 1012 write/read/invert accesses and power-off memory retention over one year, which represent a significant improvement over state- of-the-art ferroelectric memory cells, are targeted.
