Abstract
We have investigated microscopically the current leakage characteristics of SiO2 gate films in metal-oxide-semiconductor structure capacitors subjected to the Fowler-Nordheim (FN) constant current stress using a conductive atomic force microscope (C-AFM). Current images of C-AFM clearly reveal the leakage current spots in the samples in which the stress induced leakage current was confirmed by the macroscopic current-voltage (I-V) measurement. On the other hand, in the sample after the repeated macroscopic I-V measurement, there is a shift in threshold voltage for the appearance of current spots and its value directly corresponds to the voltage shift observed in the macroscopic capacitance-voltage measurements for this sample. The total number of current spots observable in the C-AFM scanned area critically depends on the substrate voltage: the spot number initially increases with the voltage to a certain value then decreases. The visibility of the current spot is well explained by the holes trapped locally at defect sites created in the stressed SiO2.
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