Temperature and field dependences of the generation-recombination noise and the thermal emission rates at the gold acceptor center in silicon

Abstract

The corner frequencies of the noise power spectra of gold doped silicon MOS field-effect transistors are used to evaluate the fluctuation time constants and the sum of the thermal emission rates of electrons and holes at the gold acceptor center as a function of sample temperature and electric field normal to the silicon-silicon dioxide interface. The sums of the thermal emission rates observed are in good agreement with those obtained more directly from dark and photo current and capacitance transient measurements reported earlier. (8) An attempt to separate the electron and hole emission rates from the noise corner frequency data and from the low frequency noise plateau is not successful due to a number of approximations and uncertainties in the device noise theory which is used to evaluate the observed noise spectra, such as the strong electric field and hence the spatial dependences of the thermal emission rates, the field and temperature dependences of the carrier mobility near the surface, and the depletion approximation assumed in the surface space layer when computing the noise.