Leakage Currents

Abstract

It is important to understand the nature of leakage currents in ferroelectric memories in order to control heating of the memory and thermal breakdown. In general, ferroelectric film capacitors on metal electrodes provide very complicated structures in which electrons, holes, and ions all contribute to conduction, and where a variety of mechanisms — including surface-limited processes such as thermionic Schottky currents and quantum mechanical Fowler—Nordheim currents, as well as bulk-limited processes such as Poole— Frenkel and Space-Charge-Limited Currents (SCLC) are all important. Typically these processes are all present at the same time, and unfortunately they are not additive; rather, they result in nonlinear integral equations for total leakage current J(V). In this book we will use the J to denote real leakage current and the letter i to designate displacement current.KeywordsLeakage CurrentFerroelectric Thin FilmFerroelectric FilmSchottky EmissionFerroelectric MemoryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.