Determination of the trap energy distribution in oxynitride charge trapping layers by temperature dependent retention measurement

Charge retention measurements on MONOS (metaloxide-nitride-oxide-silicon) capacitor structures were performed in an extended temperature range from 100 to 400 K. Both, thermal excitation (TE) and direct trap to band tunneling (TB) were taken into account to identify the energy distribution of relevant deep level centers. To separate the contribution from TE and TB, a new computation routine based on established approaches was applied. Because of the enlarged temperature range in experiment a corresponding enhanced range of trap energies can be studied. The numerical simulation results in self-consistent energy distributions of the detected trap states.