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Fowler-Nordheim Tunneling Current Oscillation Study of Interface Roughness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2011

L. Lai
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599
E.A. Irene
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599
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Abstract

A decrease in the amplitude of Fowler-Nordheim current oscillations (FN-CO) due to interface roughness is observed for thin film (∼40Å) metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices, only when the interface has high spatial complexity. Previous studies have shown no measurable changes in FN-CO's resulting from the oxidation of purposely roughened Si surfaces. The present research continues with an FN-CO study using Si surfaces with roughness of higher spatial complexity than the previous studies. The spatial complexity of the purposely roughened Si surfaces was compared using the fractal dimension (DF). Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to measure the interface topography, and fractal dimension (DF) was used to describe the surface complexity while root-mean-square (RMS) roughness was used for obtaining vertical information of the roughness. It was found that the oscillation amplitude decrease substantially with an increase of DF but with no dependence on RMS.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1999

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