Paper
28 June 2005 Charge storage in Si nanocrystals embedded in SiO2 with enhanced C-AFM
M. Porti, M. Avidano, M. Nafria, X. Aymerich, J. Carreras, B. Garrido
Author Affiliations +
Proceedings Volume 5838, Nanotechnology II; (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.608206
Event: Microtechnologies for the New Millennium 2005, 2005, Sevilla, Spain
Abstract
A Conductive Atomic Force Microscope (C-AFM) has been used to investigate the nanometer scale electrical properties of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) memory devices with Silicon nanocrystals (Si-nc) embedded in the gate oxide. This study has been possible thanks to the high lateral resolution of the technique, which allows to characterize areas of only few hundreds of nm2 and, therefore, the area that contains a reduced number of Si-nc. The results have demonstrated the capability of the Si-nc to enhance the gate oxide electrical conduction due to trap assisted tunneling. On the other hand, Si-nc can act as trapping centers. The amount of charge stored in Si-nc has been estimated through the change induced in the barrier height measured from the I-V characteristics. The results show that only ~20% of the Si-nc are charged. These nanometer scale results are consistent with those obtained during the macroscopic characterization of the same structures. Therefore, C-AFM has been shown to be a very suitable tool to perform a detailed investigation of the performance of memory devices based on MOS structures with Si-nc at such reduced scale.
© (2005) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
M. Porti, M. Avidano, M. Nafria, X. Aymerich, J. Carreras, and B. Garrido "Charge storage in Si nanocrystals embedded in SiO2 with enhanced C-AFM", Proc. SPIE 5838, Nanotechnology II, (28 June 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.608206
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KEYWORDS
Oxides

Molybdenum

Silicon

Electrons

Nanocrystals

Transmission electron microscopy

Electrodes

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