Internal photoemission study on charge trapping behavior in rapid thermal oxides on strained-Si/SiGe heterolayers

A comparative study on the nature of defects and their relationship to charge trapping with enhanced photosensitivity has been investigated through magnetic resonance and internal photoemission (IPE) experiments for rapid thermal grown oxides (RTO) on strained-Si/Si0.8Ge0.2 and on co-processed bulk-Si (1 0 0) substrates. Both the band and defect-related electronic states were characterized through EPR, IPE, C–V and I–V measurements under UV-illumination. Surface chemical characterization of as-grown ultrathin oxides (5–7 nm) has been performed using high-resolution XPS. Enhancement in Ge-segregation with increasing oxidation temperature is reported. Comparative studies on interface properties and leakage current behavior of rapid thermal oxides have also been studied through fabricating metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor structures. A degraded electrical property with increasing oxidation temperature is reported. Constant voltage stressing (CVS) in the range of 5.5–7 V was used to study the breakdown characteristics of different samples. We observe a distinguishably different time-to-breakdown (tbd) phenomenon for bulk-Si and strained-Si/SiGe samples. Whereas the oxide on bulk-Si shows a typical breakdown behavior, the RTO grown oxide on strained-Si/SiGe samples showed a quasi-or soft-breakdown with lower tbd value. It may be pointed out that quasi-breakdown may be a stronger reliability limiting factor for strained-Si/SiGe devices in the oxide thickness range studied.