Characterizations of MONOS structures with a superthin nitride film for the low voltage NVSM using TSC techniques

TSC (thermally stimulated current) technique has been applied to investigate the characteristics of MONOS (metal-oxide-nitride-oxide-semiconductor) structures with superthin nitride film of 46 Å thick for the low voltage NVSM. A new discharging model bans been developed and formulated for analysis of TSC curves due to memory traps such as the blocking oxide-nitride interface trap and the nitride bulk trap. By best fitting method, the blocking oxide-nitride interface traps are found to be energetically distributed in the range of 1.17~1.18 eV below the top of the nitride conduction band with a density of N_ON=2.3×10¹⁵ cm^-2 eV^-1. The discharging mechanism can be explained that the holes trapped in the blocking oxide-nitride interface traps, distributed uniformly in energy, are first thermally excited into the nitride valence band, then drifted to the nitride-tunneling oxide interface, and finally tunneled into the Si valence band to contribute to TSC