Nanoscale post-breakdown conduction of HfO2/SiO2 MOS gate stacks studied by enhanced-CAFM

Blasco, X; Nafria, M; Aymerich, X; Petry, Jasmine; Vandervorst, Wilfried

doi:10.1109/TED.2005.859705

Nanoscale post-breakdown conduction of HfO2/SiO2 MOS gate stacks studied by enhanced-CAFM

Author:

Blasco, X

Nafria, M ; Aymerich, X ; Petry, Jasmine ; Vandervorst, Wilfried

Keywords:

Science & Technology, Technology, Physical Sciences, Engineering, Electrical & Electronic, Physics, Applied, Engineering, Physics, conductive atomic force microscopy (CAFM), dielectric breakdown, gate dielectric, HfO2, high-k, reliability, SiO2, ELECTRICAL CHARACTERIZATION, THIN, 0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Applied Physics, 4009 Electronics, sensors and digital hardware

Abstract:

An enhanced conductive atomic force microscope has enabled a measurement of the conduction through a HfO2/SiO2 gate stack until breakdown (BD) in a single measurement, with nanometer resolution. Before the stack BD, the current-voltage characteristic shows several conduction modes. After BD, switchings between different conduction states were observed, showing that BD is a reversible phenomenon. © 2005 IEEE.