Characterization of Electronic Charged States of Silicon Nanocrystals as a Floating Gate in MOS Structures

ABSTRACTWe have studied capacitance-voltage (C-V) and displacement current-voltage characteristics of MOS capacitors with Si nanocrystals embedded in the gate oxide as a floating gate in dark and under visible light illumination at room temperature to gain a better understanding of discrete charged states of the Si-dots floating gate. The Si-dots floating gate with a dot density of 2.8×1011cm-2 and an average dot size of 8nm was fabricated on ∼2.8nm-thick thermally-grown SiO2 as a tunnel oxide by the thermal decomposition of SiH4, and covered with 7.5nm-thick control oxide prepared by thermal oxidation of a-Si. C-V characteristics of Al-gate MOS capacitors on p-type and n-type Si(100) show unique hystereses due to the charging and discharging of the Si-dots floating gate with a symmetric pattern reflecting the Fermi level of the substrate, which enable us to rule out the contribution of traps with a specific energy state to the observed hystereses. For each of high-frequency C-V curves measured in dark, a single capacitance peak appears only around a flat-band voltage condition, which is attributed to the quick flat-band voltage shift caused by the collective emission of charges retaining in the Si-dots floating gate as confirmed from the corresponding displacement current peak. Under visible light illumination, another capacitance peak due to collective charge injection to the electrically neutral Si-dots floating gate becomes observable in the inversion condition governing the on-state of MOS FETs. Thus, the optimum bias conditions for dot-floating gate MOSFETs can be predicted from the capacitor characteristics measured under light illumination.