from Part II - Characterization techniques
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
Thermally stimulated current method
Basic principle
The measurement method of thermally stimulated current (TSC) has a long history in the investigation of interface states and oxide traps (Simmons and Taylor, 1972; Mar and Simmons, 1975) even if it has not reached the same level of attention as the C–V and conductance techniques. It is especially suited for traps positioned close to the oxide/semiconductor interface, often called border traps (Fleetwood et al., 1998). The principle is based on releasing charge carriers from the trap potentials by first cooling the sample to a temperature low enough to make the thermal emission rate of the captured carrier in the region of hours, or long enough to be considered “frozen in.” This is followed by a linear temperature increase, releasing charge carriers, which gives rise to a current from which activation energies and capture cross sections can be obtained.
We will discuss TSC based on an example shown in Fig. 7.1 for a MOS structure with high-k oxide, including interface states and border traps. In our example, the latter are assumed to exist in the transition region, often occurring at the interface between the high-k oxide and an interlayer with properties as discussed in Section 4.5 (Lukovsky and Phillips, 2005).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.