New Developments in Charge Pumping Measurements on Thin Stacked Dielectrics

This paper shows important improvements in charge pumping (CP) measurements on stacked high- k dielectrics, where the defects in high- k and SiO₂ can be distinguished and estimated. The spatial profile of the interface traps and bulk traps is obtained by plotting the trap density as a function of the discharge time. Furthermore, the spectroscopic character of the base-level CP technique is demonstrated in HfSiON/SiO₂ gate dielectrics by changing the applied pulse bias. It is found that when large pulse amplitude is applied to the gate, two bands appear superimposed on top of the usual base-level CP curve, suggesting the presence of two separate defect energy levels in the high-k dielectric.