Thermal oxidation of chemical vapour deposited tungsten layers on silicon substrates for embedded non-volatile memory application

This research is targeted to enhance the functionality of bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor by innovative concepts of embedded resistive random access memory (RRAM) cells integration in the back-end-of-line (BEOL) region. The material of our interest is tungsten oxide as an insulator in RRAM cells and we focussed on the growth and characterisation of closed tungsten oxide layers. In this materials science study, we investigated the tungsten oxidation process under BEOL constraints (<450 °C). Thin films of tungsten oxide (6–50 nm) were prepared by oxidising, under an atmosphere of one bar oxygen, the chemical vapour deposited tungsten layers on TiN covered silicon wafers. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy investigations indicate that the stoichiometric WO3 grows after oxidation at 300 °C for an hour. The tungsten oxide layers prepared above 300 °C for longer than 15 min were non-stoichiometric. The X-ray diffraction investigations reveal the crystallisation of the WO3 layers in monoclinic phase above 350 °C when oxidised for longer than 30 min; above 400 °C the (001) growth texture becomes dominant.