Post‐breakdown conduction mechanism of thin oxide films and their aspects

Abstract

SUMMARYThis study investigates extremely thin silicon oxide with thicknesses of 3 to 5 nm produced by various fabrication processes, and the post-breakdown characteristics are studied. This paper describes the results of comparison. By analysis of the conduction characteristics after intrinsic breakdown, it is shown that there exist two conduction mechanisms-resistive and barrier type-for oxide films with thicknesses of 3.3 and 5.2 nm. These properties of the conduction characteristics are very similar to those reported for the soft breakdown state, which indicates that the conduction mechanisms essentially do not differ much between soft and intrinsic breakdown. It is also shown that the intrinsic breakdown process progresses in two stages in an oxide film with a thickness of 3.3 nm, in contrast to film with a thickness of 5.2 nm.