Impact of bilayer character on High K gate stack dielectrics breakdown obtained by conductive atomic force microscopy

Nanoscale Characterization of TiO2 Films Grown by Atomic Layer Deposition on RuO2 Electrodes

“…CAFM is a powerful technique for the investigation of leakage currents through thin dielectric layers with nanoscale lateral resolution. − Applying a voltage between a conductive tip and the bottom electrode the current flowing through the dielectric is locally measured at nanoscale simultaneously with the surface topography. In this work, nanoscale leakage current distributions of TiO 2 films grown by two different ALD processes were measured by CAFM to investigate the origin of the difference in their leakage current characteristics.…”

Nanoscale Characterization of High-K/IL Gate Stack TDDB Distributions After High-Field Prestress Pulses

“…For sake of clarity, we will present first the TDDB characteristics obtained without pre-stress [18]. TDDB measurements have been recorded on a HfSiON(1.7 nm)/SiON(1.4 nm) bilayer gate oxide and compared with the ones obtained on the SiON(1.4 nm) layer alone.…”

“…However, the changes of this parameter are small and the value of τ IL0 remains close to the initial one. As developed in [18], the variations of τ IL0 may come from an interfacial charging of the oxide during the pre-stress. According to eq.…”

“…( 18) accounts well for the t 63% evolution, or aging, as a function of stress duration and height as well as the stress area. Equations (18) or (19) allow extrapolating the reduction of t 63% to a large range of pulse durations and pulse heights. The parameter N enables to extend the formula to any test area.…”

(Invited) Advanced Measurement Techniques for the Characterization of ReRAM Devices

“…Because of the local nature of the CF that drives the current in ReRAM devices, techniques with large lateral resolution (in the nanometer range), such as the Conductive Atomic Force Microscopy (CAFM), are required to directly get information on the properties of this CF. CAFM has already been used to extensively characterize the electrical properties and reliability of gate dielectrics (15,16,17). The CAFM can be used to switch the resistance of the dielectric material by using the conductive tip as the top electrode of the stack structure (18,19,20).…”