Electrical Characterization Techniques of Dielectric Thin Films Using Metal–Insulator–Metal Structures

Abstract

In this paper, we describe an electrical characterization technique of dielectric thin films using metal–insulator–metal (MIM) structures and an LCR meter. It is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally that the equivalent parallel conductance and equivalent parallel capacitance of MIM capacitors necessarily show artificial frequency dispersions due to the effects of series resistance, owing to electrode and probing contact resistances. A procedure to extract the true equivalent parallel conductance and capacitance from measured admittance data is presented.