Ekaterina received a double degree in Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at the Technion in 2015. Ekaterina has joined Electronic materials group under the supervision of Prof. Moshe Eizenberg in 2015 and passed to a PhD-direct track in 2017. The objective of her research is to study the modification of the effective work function (EWF) of refractory metals-based metallization deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) for advanced metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structures.
ALD of metallic materials, such as metal nitrides, carbides, and binary alloys, is of particular scientific and technological interest for high-k metal-gate (HKMG) devices, since it is a flexible tool for tuning the electrical performances through compositional and structural variation of the deposited gate-metal. The metal/dielectric EWF is one of the important parameters that determine the device performance and its tuning is a significant challenge in the HKMG technology.
A thorough characterization of ALD deposited ultrathin metallic films and a correlation with MOS electrical properties are necessary to study the modification of the metal/dielectric EWF.