Contamination aspccts of ferroelectric (SrBi₂Ta₂O₉) and high diclcctric constant (Ba,Sr)TiO₃ materials in CMOS processes were investigated in this paper, TXRF, VPD-TXRF, and ToF-SIMS were used to study the desorption and diffusion properties of Sr. Bi. and Ba contamination on Si at 800°C anneals. Sr and Ba dissolve in native or thermal oxide, and only very small quantities diffuse into silicon, whereas Bi - if annealed in N₂ - evaporates and its diffusion into silicon cannot be detected; in case of O₂ annealing, all Bi is incorporated in the thermal oxide grown. The diffusion constants for Ba and Sr in Si are in the order of I O^-16 cm²/s at 800°C. Measurements of minority carrier recombination lifetime of contaminated n and p-type wafers showed no drastic decrease in lifetime for the three elements up to contamination levels of 10¹⁴ at/cm² The leakage currents of diodes contaminated after device processing by Ba, Sr. and Bi up with concentrations between 10¹² and 10¹⁴" at/cm² have nearly the same value as for non-contaminatcd diodes. This leads to the conclusion that Sr. Bi. and Ba do not present a drastic risk on minority carrier lifetime and diode leakage current in future Gbit-scale non-volatile Ferroelectric Random Access Memories (NVFeRAMs) or high diclectric constant Dynamic Random Access Memories (high k-DRAMs) generatioas.