Abstract

 This work demonstrates high-pressure deuterium annealing (HPDA) to improve the performance and reliability of HfO₂ based gate-all-around ferroelectric FET (GAA-FeFET). HPDA switches device operation from a trapping dominated (TD) clockwise (CW) to an ideal ferroelectric switching dominated (FSD) counter-clockwise (CCW) hysteresis, yielding a maximum memory window (MW) of 1.6 V with significantly reduced device-to-device (D2D) variation. Unlike high-pressure hydrogen annealing (HPHA) which degrades remanent polarization (P_r), HPDA enhances 2P_r up to 48 μC/cm². X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) confirms a reduction in oxygen vacancy (V_o) and sub-oxide. Low-frequency noise spectroscopy (LFN) reveals a decrease in interface trap density at HZO/SiO₂ interface (D_it,HZO/SiO2 ) to 8 x 10¹⁰ cm^-2eV^-1. This improved interface quality results in robust endurance ( 10⁷ cycles at +-5 V/100 μ​s) and retention behavior. These results establish HPDA as a crucial process for reliable, high performance GAA-FeFET.