High-k/metal gates- from research lab to market reality

High-k/Metal Gate stacks have long held the promise to replace SiON/Poly-Si stacks in conventional CMOS devices. In this paper it wll be shown that substantial materials innovations by scientists and engineers working concurrently within IBM Alliances in Research and Development over the past decade have helped understand and circumvent fundamental high-k based obstacles including reduced electron mobility, oxygen based thermal instabilities (interfacial regrowth and oxygen vacancies) thereby paving the way for High-k/Metal Gate CMOS implementation in a gate first approach.