Determination of the effective mass of ballistic electrons in thin silicon oxides films using tunneling current oscillations

A new, simple and accurate method is proposed for the determination of the effective electron mass in thin insulator films from the current–voltage characteristics in fields of the ballistic electron emission regime. The effective mass of electrons was evaluated for oxide films of metal-oxide-semiconductor structures. The effective ballistic electron mass near the conduction band edge of silicon dioxide for different structures changes from 0.52 to 0.84m0 and the experimental data show that the value of the effective mass of the ballistic electron can be treated as a constant while the gate voltage changes at least within a certain voltage range.