**Appendix A**

Figure A1 shows the typical capacitance and conductance curves obtained on <sup>70</sup> × <sup>70</sup> <sup>μ</sup>m2 capacitors at a frequency of 100 kHz. The capacitors were fabricated on a p-doped, 300 mm Si substrate with SiO2 bevel. Data is shown for 3 nm HfO2 high-k liner and Ru gate electrode. The capacitors are sequentially measured at different voltage sweep ranges (i) 1 V to −1 V, (ii) 2 V to −2 V, (iii) 3 V to −3 V. We could notice that there is little impact of the voltage sweep on the hysteresis of the curves. Capacitance data from the 2 V to −2 V voltage sweep range is then used to subsequently extract the flat band voltage, *VFB*.

**Figure A1.** Typical (**a**) capacitance and (**b**) conductance measurements performed in this work. Data shown for Ru/HfO2 combination on a SiO2 bevel (slant etch) on a p-type Si substrate. The capacitors are sequentially measured at different voltage sweep ranges (i) 1 V to −1 V, (ii) 2 V to −2 V, (iii) 3 V to −3 V.

> Figure A2 shows the schematic of an automated *VFB* extraction with a robust and traceable procedure. Test for gate leakage is performed in the measurement routine (not shown) and warnings are issued if any issues are encountered. Only those data with appropriate fit errors are filtered for further analysis. The rest of the analysis follows as discussed in the main article (see page 5 onwards).

**Figure A2.** Example procedure of data extraction from measurement.

#### **References**

