•The growth rate of PEALD Pt on HF-finished Si substrate was obtained for the first time.•TMA pretreatment is an effective strategy to optimize the PEALD Pt deposition process.•Low resistivity of the Pt films was obtained by PEALD Pt for platinum silicide application.Benefiting from the good etching and patterning feasibilities and excellent electrical properties, platinum silicide attracts renewed attention as a suitable candidate for the next generation complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies recently. This work focuses on the effects of the trimethylaluminum (TMA) pretreatment on the Plasma Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition (PEALD) growth of Platinum (Pt) film on silicon substrate by using (methylcyclopentadienyl)-trimethyl platinum (MeCpPtMe3) and ammonia plasma as precursors. The incubation period of PEALD Pt was shortened by TMA pretreatment, and the saturation growth rate reached 0.21 Å/cycle. X-ray diffraction showed that as-deposited films have strongly preferred orientation along the (111) plane. The resistivity of the as-deposited Pt film can be approached to 15 μΩ cm. At last, an optimized PEALD Pt process was put forward. Our research provides an effective strategy for the fabrication of high-quality Pt thin films on Si substrate. The findings are important to obtain well defined silicide films which would be used in the advanced CMOS source and drain technology.

•Two RRAM devices were designed with the thin Al2O3/ HfO2 stack as functional layer to solve the instability of switching voltages obstacles.•Al2O3/ HfO2 stack as resistive switching layers ruled by the principle of electric field modulation in the switching region.•Devices were designed by two different thickness of the Al2O3 film with the same thickness of HfO2 film beneath the alumina.•Such electric field modulation structure provides a possible solution to the promising application of the RRAMs based on transition metal oxides.Two Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) devices were designed with the thin Al2O3/thick HfO2 stack as a functional layer. These devices used different thickness of Al2O3 layer and same thickness of HfO2 layer. The fluctuation of the SET and the RESET voltages, the main obstacle which blocks the application of RRAMs based on transition metal oxide, leads to the instability of the RRAM. The random circuit breaker network (RCB) model points out that the fluctuation of the voltages is the universal problem of RRAM devices and it originated from the working principles of devices. With this structure, the random formation and rupture of conducting filaments are limited within the Al2O3 film, which own lower k value, near the anode region instead of random formation and rupture in the whole functional layer. And experiments find that for the device with 5 nm Al2O3 film, the distributions of the 80% VSET and VRESET are limited within 0.2 V (from 0.6 V to 0.8 V) and 0.25 V (from − 0.5 V to − 0.25 V), respectively. For comparison, distributions for the device with 10 nm Al2O3 film are within 1.1 V (from 0.6 V to 1.7 V) and 1 V (from − 1.3 V to 0.3 V), respectively.