Investigation of hole-tunneling current through ultrathin oxynitride/oxide stack gate dielectrics in p-MOSFETs

The systematic investigation of hole tunneling current through ultrathin oxide, oxynitride, oxynitride/oxide (N/O) and oxide/oxynitride/oxide (ONO) gate dielectrics in p-MOSFETs using a physical model is reported for the first time. The validity of the model is corroborated by the good agreement between the simulated and experimental results. Under typical inversion biases (|VG|<2 V), hole tunneling current is lower through oxynitride and oxynitride/oxide with about 33 at.% N than through pure oxide and nitride gate dielectrics. This is attributed to the competitive effects of the increase in the dielectric constant, and hence dielectric thickness, and decrease in the hole barrier height at the dielectric/Si interface with increasing with N concentration for a given electrical oxide thickness (EOT). For a N/O stack film with the same N concentration in the oxynitride, the hole tunneling current decreases monotonically with oxynitride thickness under the typical inversion biases. For minimum gate leakage current and maintaining an acceptable dielectric/Si interfacial quality, an N/O stack structure consisting of an oxynitride layer with 33 at.% N and a 3 Å oxide layer is proposed. For a p-MOSFET at an operating voltage of -0.9 V, which is applicable to the 0.7 μm technology node, this structure could be scaled to EOT=12 Å if the maximum allowed gate leakage current is 1 A/cm² and EOT=9 Å if the maximum allowed gate leakage current is 100 A/cm²