The effects of interfacial suboxide transition regions on direct tunneling in oxide and stacked oxide-nitride gate dielectrics

Abstract

This paper builds on previous work that has demonstrated the effects of interfacial suboxide transition regions at SiSiO 2 interfaces on tunneling oscillations in the Fowler-Nordheim regime. This paper extends thes effects to the direct tunneling regime and focuses on differences in interfacial transition regions between SiSiO 2 interfaces with, and without monolayer level interface nitridation. Tunneling currents in devices with the same oxide-equivalent thickness are reduced by monolayer level interfacial nitrogen with respect to devices without interface nitridation for i) substrate and gate injection and ii) in both the direct and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling regimes.