A simple method for determination of Fowler–Nordheim tunnelling parameters

Abstract

A simple technique for extracting the Fowler–Nordheim (FN) tunnelling parameters is proposed. It consists of measuring the Drain-Source current of a floating gate transistor while a linear ramp voltage is applied to a simple injector structure attached to the transistor's floating gate. Such a test device is fabricated using a standard CMOS process. The parameters obtained can be used in a freely available electrical simulator as SPICE3f5 (NGSPICE), but in general it can be easily adapted to other SPICE-like programs. We describe the technique step-by-step and a comparison is made of simulated and measured FN tunnelling parameters, for a floating gate transistor with tunnelling injectors. A good agreement has been found between experimental and simulated data.