Comparison of charge trapping in silicon dioxide and hafnium dioxide at nanoscale

In this paper, we report a new measurement technique that can be used to determine the nanoscale charge trapping properties of gate oxide. Forward and backward sweep ramped voltage were applied to the samples in order to measure the nanoscale I-V characteristics using conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM) in conjunction with a semiconductor parameter analyzer, Agilent 4156C. From the voltage hysteresis between the forward and backward sweeps I-V characteristics at a fixed current level, we successfully compared the differences between the nanoscale charge trapping in thermal SiO₂ and ALD HfO₂ gate dielectrics.