Advanced ceramic oxides for electronics

Advanced ceramic oxides play a dominant role in electronics as functional films with dielectric, piezoelectric, ferroelectric or superconducting properties. For integration of these films into passive or active devices different technologies such as electrochemical and thermal formation or CVD and PVD (chemical or physical vapour deposition) are established. In this treatise the effect of fabrication technology on the film properties is studied with focus on electrochemical formation. As one important example for electrochemical dielectric film formation, Ta-capacitor manufacturing is discussed. It is shown that anodic valve metal oxide films are promising as „high k“ materials for active devices such as DRAM storage capacitors or MOSFET gate oxides as well. For characterization of oxide films at high lateral resolution, the new method of SAME (spectroscopic anisotropy micro-ellipsometry) is introduced.