Impact of interfacial layer on low-frequency noise of HfSiON dielectric MOSFETs

Author

Min, Bigang ; Devireddy, Siva Prasad ; Çelik-Butler, Zeynep ; Shanware, Ajit ; Colombo, Luigi ; Green, Keith ; Chambers, J.J. ; Visokay, M.R. ; Rotondaro, Antonio Luis Pacheco

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Texas Univ., Arlington, TX, USA

Volume

53

Issue

6

fYear

2006

fDate

6/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1459

Lastpage

1466

Abstract

Low-frequency noise measurements and analysis were performed on n-channel MOSFETs with HfSiON as the gate-dielectric material. The role of SiON interfacial-layer thickness was investigated. It was observed that these fluctuations can be described by the unified flicker-noise model that attributes noise to correlated carrier-number/mobility fluctuations due to trapping states in the gate dielectric. The model was modified to include the effect of different gate stack layers on the observed noise. The carrier-number fluctuations were found to dominate over the correlated mobility fluctuations in the measured bias range and more so at the lower gate overdrives. The noise magnitude showed a decrease with increasing SiON interfacial-layer thickness. Furthermore, an inverse-proportionality relationship was revealed between the effective oxide trap density and SiON thickness.

Keywords

MOSFET; carrier mobility; dielectric materials; flicker noise; hafnium compounds; semiconductor device models; semiconductor device noise; silicon compounds; HfSiON; HfSiON dielectric MOSFET; correlated carrier-number fluctuations; correlated mobility fluctuations; gate overdrives; gate stack layers; gate-dielectric material; interfacial layer; low-frequency noise; oxide trap density; trapping states; unified flicker-noise model; Attenuation; Electron mobility; Electron traps; Fluctuations; High K dielectric materials; High-K gate dielectrics; Low-frequency noise; MOSFETs; Semiconductor device noise; Wave functions; HfSiON; MOSFET; high-; interfacial layer (IL); low-frequency (LF) noise; oxide trap density;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2006.874759

Filename

1637644