Thickness determination of thin and ultra-thin SiO2 films by C-AFM IV-spectroscopy

Conductive atomic force microscopy was used to determine the electrical oxide thickness for five different silicon dioxide layers with thickness in the order of 1.6–5.04 nm. The electrical thickness results were compared with values determined by ellipsometry. A semi-analytical tunnelling current model with one single parameter set was used to superpose current/voltage curves in both the direct tunnelling and the Fowler–Nordheim tunnelling regime regions. The overall electrical oxide thickness was determined by statistical means from results of nearly 3000 IV-curves recorded for different conductive CoCr-coated tips. Good agreement between the shape of model and experimental data was achieved, widely independent of the oxide thickness. Compared with the ellipsometry value, the electrical thickness was larger by a value of 0.36 nm (22%) for the thinnest oxide and smaller by a value of 0.31 nm (6%) for the thickest oxide, while intermediate values yielded differences better than 0.15 nm (<6%). The physical differences between the measurement techniques were shown to contribute to this observation. In addition, statistical deviations between single and multiple measurements using a single tip and using a number of different tips were analysed. The causes, for example, natural oxide thickness variations, tip wear, air humidity induced effects and contaminations, are evaluated and discussed. The method proposed was able to determine the electrical oxide thickness with a standard deviation in the order of 6–9%. The results suggest that for optimal results it is necessary to perform several repetitions of IV-measurements for one sample and, in addition, to employ more than one tip