Rare-earth oxides are among the materials which are presently studied as possible replacements of amorphous silicon dioxide as gate insulators in nanometric Si devices; in fact, they generally exhibit high values of the dielectric constant (“high κ”), a necessary requirement to obtain a high capacitance with layer thickness greater than the value below which tunneling currents become unacceptably high. Lu 2 O 3 is one of the rare-earth oxides which may have the required properties in view of its quite high values of κ and forbidden ...