Determination of generation lifetime fromC-t transients under linear voltage ramp bias

Abstract

When a linear voltage ramp is applied to the gate of a MOS capacitor, a capacitancetime (C-t) transient is observed. The MOS capacitor is biased into strong inversion before applying the voltage ramp in order to eliminate surface generation. FromC-t transient curve obtained experimentally the minority carrier generation lifetime in semiconductor can be determined. The experimental results show that for the same sample the lifetimes extracted fromC-t curves under varying voltage sweep rates are close each other, and they are consistent with the lifetimes extracted by saturation capacitance method.