Hafnium oxynitride (HfOxNy) gate dielectric has been deposited on Si (1 0 0) by means of radio frequency (rf) reactive sputtering using directly a HfO2 target in N-2/Ar ambient. The thermal stability and microstructural characteristics for the HfOxNy films have been investigated. XPS results confirmed that nitrogen was successfully incorporated into the HfO2 films. XRD analyses showed that the HfOxNy films remain amorphous after 800 degrees C annealing in N-2 ambient. Meanwhile the HfOxNy films can also effectively suppress oxygen diffusion during high temperature annealing and prevent interface layer from forming between HfOxNy films and Si substrates. AFM measurements demonstrated that surface roughness of the HfOxNy films increase slightly as compared to those pure HfO-, films after post deposition annealing. By virtue of building reasonable model structure, the optical properties of the HfOxNy films have been discussed in detail. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.