Stress-induced current in thin silicon dioxide films

Author

Moazzami, R. ; Chenming Hu

Author_Institution

Adv. Products Res. & Dev. Lab., Motorola Inc., Austin, TX, USA

fYear

1992

fDate

13-16 Dec. 1992

Firstpage

139

Lastpage

142

Abstract

Low-field current following Fowler-Nordheim stress of thin gate oxides is studied. The conduction mechanism is attributed to trap-assisted tunneling of electrons. For oxides thicker than 100 AA, this stress-induced current is observed to decay as traps are filled without significant tunneling out of traps. In thinner oxides, steady-state current flows when there is an equilibrium between trap filling and emptying processes. This model is observed to be consistent with stress-induced current behavior in a wide range of oxide thicknesses (60 AA to 130 AA) and process technologies.<>

Keywords

dielectric thin films; electron traps; electronic conduction in insulating thin films; semiconductor device models; semiconductor-insulator boundaries; silicon compounds; tunnelling; 60 to 130 A; Fowler-Nordheim stress; Si-SiO/sub 2/; conduction mechanism; low-field current; model; oxide thicknesses; steady-state current flow; stress-induced current; thin SiO/sub 2/ films; trap emptying processes; trap filling; trap-assisted tunneling; Charge carrier lifetime; Conductivity; Dielectric films; Semiconductor device modeling; Semiconductor-insulator interfaces; Silicon compounds; Tunneling;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting, 1992. IEDM '92. Technical Digest., International

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA, USA

ISSN

0163-1918

Print_ISBN

0-7803-0817-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.1992.307327

Filename

307327