HfO
2-based ferroelectric thin films have attracted significant attention due to their exceptional ferroelectric properties even at sub-10 nm thickness, wide bandgap, complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible storage technologies, and their lead-free nature, compared to conventional ferroelectrics such as Pb(Ti,Zr)O
3 [
1,
2,
3]. Among the various HfO
2-based ferroelectric thin films, Hf
1-xZr
xO
2 (HZO) thin films are particularly promising due to their property to exhibit ferroelectricity at lower crystallization temperature (400–600 °C), and the robust remnant polarization, making them a favorable choice for back-end-of-line (BEOL) integration [
1]. As reported, a non-centrosymmetric polar orthorhombic phase (o-phase, Pca2
1) is responsible for ferroelectricity in HfO
2-based thin films [
4]. The o-phase in HfO
2-based thin films can be stabilized by doping with group III dopants, such as Al, La, and Y, which form oxygen vacancies, thereby reducing the energy barrier of the ferroelectric phase [
5]. Among them, ferroelectric properties for Y are greatly improved by doping with HfO
2-based thin films [
6]. Various studies have been conducted on the effect of group III dopants on HfO
2 thin films using various deposition methods [
7,
8,
9]. More recently, studies have focused on the effects of group-III dopants with low doping concentrations on the ferroelectric properties of HZO thin films. Group III dopants contribute not only to the stabilization of the o-phase but also to the stabilization of the tetragonal (t-phase) and cubic (c-phase) phases depending on their doping concentration, demanding precise control of the doping concentration at fine scales [
5,
7,
10]. Thus, the necessity for atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes with excellent controllability for low-level doping, thickness, and conformal integration has become more pronounced [
11]. To date, there have been some reports on ferroelectric Al-HZO and La-HZO ferroelectric thin films deposited by ALD; however, there have been only a few reports on Y-HZO ferroelectric films prepared by ALD [
10,
12,
13,
14]. Most Y-HZO films have been deposited using the chemical solution deposition (CSD) method, which is limited to controlling fine doping concentrations at small thicknesses and requires very high annealing temperatures [
11,
15,
16]. Meanwhile, as mentioned, a low thermal budget is essential for integrating ferroelectric devices into the BEOL process, which has a limited temperature below 400 °C [
17,
18]. From this perspective, we report the first superior and stable ferroelectricity of HZO thin films deposited by ALD using a thermally stable cyclopentadienyl (Cp)-based cocktail precursor without annealing [
19]. In addition, we systematically investigated the ferroelectric behavior of the as-deposited HZO thin films with various Zr compositions. The transition behaviors of paraelectric, ferroelectric, and antiferroelectric characteristics were observed for the first time in the as-deposited state [
20].
Building on our previous research, this study focused on investigating the effects of Y doping cycles on the ferroelectric and additional electrical properties of as-deposited 10-nm-thick HZO thin films with various compositions fabricated via ALD. At low Y doping cycles, the ferroelectric properties of the as-deposited Y-HZO thin films were enhanced by the phase transition to the o-phase. As the number of Y-doping cycles increased, the o-phase, t-phase, and c-phase gradually stabilized, and the ferroelectric transition behavior (ferroelectric-antiferroelectric-paraelectric) of the as-deposited Y-HZO thin films was observed. Moreover, the boundary between the ferroelectric- and antiferroelectric-like properties of the Y-HZO thin films can be changed by changing the initial composition of the HZO thin films. In addition, the as-deposited Y-HZO thin films exhibited several advantages, including an improved dielectric constant, reduced leakage current density, enhanced endurance, and decreased coercive field value compared to pure HZO thin films. These desirable characteristics make the as-deposited Y-HZO thin films suitable for various semiconductor devices that require high ferroelectric properties, excellent electrical properties, and reliability within a low thermal budget. Examples of such applications include capacitor-based ferroelectric random-access memories (FRAM), ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs), and ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) [
21,
22].