Modeling temperature dependency (6 – 400K) of the leakage current through the SiO2/high-K stacks

We investigate the mechanism of the gate leakage current in the Si/SiO₂/HfO₂/TiN stacks in a wide temperature range (6 - 400 K) by simulating the electron transport using a multi-phonon trap assisted tunneling model. Good agreement between simulations and measurements allows indentifying the dominant physical processes controlling the temperature dependency of the gate current. In depletion/weak inversion, the current is limited by the supply of carrier. In strong inversion, the electron-phonon interaction is found to be the dominant factor determining the current voltage and temperature dependencies. These simulations allowed to extract important defect parameters, e.g. the trap relaxation energy and phonon effective energy, which defines the defect atomic structure.