Degradation of silicon dioxide films is shown to occur primarily near interfaces with contacting metals or semiconductors. This deterioration is shown to be accountable through two mechanisms triggered by electron heating in the oxide conduction band. These mechanisms are trap creation and band‐gap ionization by carriers with energies exceeding 2 and 9 eV with respect to the bottom of the oxide conduction band, respectively. The relationship of band‐gap ionization to defect production and subsequent degradation is emphasized. The dependence of the generated sites on electric field, oxide thickness, temperature, voltage polarity, and processing for each mechanism is discussed. A procedure for separating and studying these two generation modes is also discussed. A unified model from simple kinetic relationships is developed and compared to the experimental results. Destructive breakdown of the oxide is shown to be correlated with ‘‘effective’’ interface softening due to the total defect generation caused by both mechanisms.

Impact ionization, trap creation, degradation, and breakdown in silicon dioxide films on silicon

Trap creation in both the bulk of silicon dioxide films and at its interfaces with silicon and metallic contacting electrodes is shown to depend on the presence of hot electrons in the oxide. For thick oxides (≥100 A), little trap creation is observed in the near‐thermal transport regime at electric field magnitudes less than 1.5 MV/cm. At these low fields, electrons travel in a streaming fashion close to the bottom of the oxide conduction band at energies less than that of the dominant optical phonon mode at 0.153 eV. At higher electric fields, the rate of bulk trap creation is proportional to the average energy of the hot electrons, which move in a dispersive manner and can reach energies as large as 4 eV. For thin oxides (<100 A) where electrons can travel ballistically (i.e., without scattering), traps are not produced unless injected electrons acquire more than 2 eV of kinetic energy from the applied electric field, regardless of the magnitude of this field. All data on both thin and thick oxides are shown to give a threshold for trap creation of about 2.3 eV by the hot electrons in the oxide conduction band. Also, trap creation is shown to be suppressed by lowering the lattice temperature below ≊150 K. Our results are discussed in terms of a model involving hydrogen‐related‐species release from defect sites near the anode by the hot electrons and the subsequent motion of these molecules to regions near the cathode where they can interact with the lattice and form the trapping sites which are measured.

Trap creation in silicon dioxide produced by hot electrons

The effect of enduring charge injection on the physical properties of the SiO2 layer of a metal‐oxide‐semiconductor structure is studied by means of a novel characterization method. It is based on the observation reported previously, that under charge injection conditions the density of occupied oxide traps reaches a value which is only a fraction of the total trap density. This trap occupation level is strongly dependent on the oxide electric field. The oxide trap density can be evaluated by measuring this field dependence, using a relatively small amount of charge injection. This method is used to distinguish between the process of trap generation and electron trapping in the generated traps, under conditions of continuous charge injection up to levels of more than 50 C/cm2. The trap generation rate is found to be proportional to the flux of the injected charge, and to increase exponentially with the oxide electric field. At high oxide field only a small fraction of the newly generated traps are occupie...

Trap generation and occupation dynamics in SiO2 under charge injection stress

The location of positive trapped charge in the dry thermally grown films of SiO2 on Si in MOS structures has been investigated by combining the internal photoemission‐voltage dependence from both interfaces with the capacitance‐voltage technique Trapped holes have been produced in the SiO2 by vacuum ultraviolet (vuv) photons, x rays, and high‐field stressing After irradiation under positive gate bias, trapped holes have been found to reside near the Si‐SiO2 interface with an upper limit of about 50 A determined for their centroid from this interface After irradiation under negative bias, a similar situation was found to occur near the Al‐SiO2 interface; and in addition some positive charge was found approximately at the Si‐SiO2 interface After high‐field stressing under negative bias, positive charge was found approximately at the Si‐SiO2 interface The charge locating technique is described in detail as well as the implications of the results to radiation damage and insulator breakdown

Location of positive charges in SiO2 films on Si generated by vuv photons, x rays, and high‐field stressing

Electron heating in silicon dioxide (SiO2) at electric fields ≲5 MV/cm is demonstrated using three different experimental techniques: carrier separation, electroluminescence, and vacuum emission. Gradual heating of the electronic carrier distribution is demonstrated for fields from 5 to 12 MV/cm with the average excess energy of the distribution reaching ≳4 eV with respect to the bottom of the SiO2 conduction band edge. Off‐stoichiometric SiO2 (OS‐SiO2) layers are shown to behave similarly to very thin SiO2(≲70 A in thickness) with a transition occurring from ‘‘cool’’ to ‘‘hot’’ electrons as the conduction mechanism changes from direct tunneling between silicon (Si) islands in the SiO2 matrix of the OS‐SiO2 material to Fowler‐Nordheim emission into the conduction band of the SiO2 regions. The relationship of electron heating to electron trapping, positive charge generation, interface state creation, and dielectric breakdown is treated. The importance of various scattering mechanisms for stabilizing the el...

P. Solomon

Papers

Impact ionization in silicon dioxide at fields in the breakdown range