KrF Excimer Laser Annealing With an Ultra-Low Laser Fluence for Enabling Ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2

In this letter, we report the KrF excimer laser annealing for achieving high-performance ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2(HZO). The laser anneals the target device layer effectively with a high heating/cooling rate without overheating under-layer deep structures. The impact of laser fluence, number of pulses, and pulse duration on the ferroelectricity in HZO was carefully studied through numerical simulation and experiment. The remnant polarization 2p(r) of 22 mu C/cm(2), a coercive field of similar to 1 MV/cm, and a cycling endurance >10(8) were achieved in the 8 nm ferroelectric HZO thin film annealed by the laser with an ultra-low laser fluence of similar to 84 mJ/cm(2) and 20 pulses. Benefiting from the large beam size of KrF excimer laser, the laser annealing is practical for obtaining stable wafer-scale ferroelectric HZO within a short time.