Extraction and evolution of Fowler-Nordheim tunneling parameters of thin gate oxides under EEPROM-like dynamic degradation

Abstract

Abstract A new method is presented for the extraction of the Fowler-Nordheim (FN) tunneling parameters of thin gate oxides from experimental current-voltage characteristics of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) capacitors. In this technique, the classical low temperature FN current model is considered but an improved numerical procedure has been implemented for the calculation of the oxide electric field — gate voltage relationship. It is shown that this iterative method leads to an excellent fit of experimental data with theoretical curves for both p-type and n-type substrates, even in the case of high doping levels. The procedure allows the determination of both FN tunneling parameters and potential barrier heights at silicon and polysilicon interfaces with a systematic estimation of the statistical fitting errors on each parameter. It is applied here to the study of the variations of the FN tunneling parameters of thin oxides submitted to EEPROM-like dynamic degradation.