Title :
Tunneling leakage current in oxynitride: dependence on oxygen/nitrogen content
Author :
Guo, Xin ; Ma, T.P.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Yale Univ., New Haven, CT, USA
fDate :
6/1/1998 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
It is widely known that the addition of nitrogen in silicon oxide, or the addition of oxygen in silicon nitride, affects its reliability as a gate dielectric. The authors examine the gate leakage current as a function of the oxygen and nitrogen contents in ultrathin silicon oxynitride films on Si substrates. It is shown that, provided that electron tunneling is the dominant current conduction mechanism, the gate leakage current in the direct tunneling regime increases monotonically with the oxygen content for a given equivalent oxide thickness (EOT), such that pure silicon nitride passes the least amount of current while pure silicon oxide is the leakiest.
Keywords :
MIS capacitors; MISFET; dielectric thin films; leakage currents; semiconductor device reliability; semiconductor-insulator boundaries; silicon compounds; tunnelling; N content; O content; Si; Si substrates; SiON-Si; current conduction mechanism; electron tunneling; gate dielectric reliability; gate leakage current; oxynitride dielectric; tunneling leakage current; ultrathin silicon oxynitride films; Dielectric constant; Dielectric films; Dielectric substrates; Electrons; Leakage current; Nitrogen; Oxygen; Semiconductor films; Silicon; Tunneling;
Journal_Title :
Electron Device Letters, IEEE