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Voltage at the gate |
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Conditions in the Si |
Voltage drop |
Charge distribution |
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Zero gate
voltage.
"Flat band"
condition |
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Nothing happens. The band in the substrate is
perfectly flat (and so is the band in the contact electrode, but that is of no
interest). |
We only would have a voltage (or better
potential) drop, if the Fermi energies of substrate and gate electrode were
different |
There are no net charges |
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Pos. gate
voltage.
Accumulation |
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With a positive voltage at the gate we attract
the electrons in the substrate. The bands must bend down somewhat, and we
increase the number of electrons in the conduction band accordingly. (There is
a bit of a space charge region (SCR) in the contact, but that is of no
interest).
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The voltage drops mostly in the oxide |
There is some pos. charge at the gate electrode interface (with
our Si electrode from the SCR), and negative charge from the many electrons in the
(thin) accumulation layer on the other side of the gate dielectric. |
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Small neg. gate
voltage.
Depletion |
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With a (small) negative voltage at the gate, we
repel the electrons in the substrate. Their concentration decreases, the hole
concentration is still low - we have a layer depleted of mobile carriers and
therefore a SCR. |
The voltage drops mostly in the oxide, but also
to some extent in the SCR. |
There is some negative charge at the gate electrode interface
(accumulated electrons with our Si electrode), and positive charge smeared out in the the (extended)
SCR layer on the other side of the gate dielectric. |
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Large neg. gate
voltage.
Inversion |
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With a (large) negative voltage at the gate, we
repel the electrons in the substrate very much. The bands bend so much, that
the Fermi energy (red line) is in the lower half of the band close to the
interface. In this region holes are the majority carriers, we have inversion. We still have a SCR, too. |
The voltage drops mostly in the oxide, but also
to some extent in the SCR and the inversion layer. |
There is more negative charge at the gate electrode interface
(accumulated electrons with our Si electrode), some positive charge smeared out in the the (extended)
SCR layer on the other side of the gate dielectric, and a lot of
positive charge from the holes in thin
inversion layer. |
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Qualitatively, this is clear. What
happens if we replace the (highly n-doped) Si of the gate
electrode with some metal (or p-doped Si)? |
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Then we have different Fermi energies to the left and right of
the contact, leading to a built-in
potential as in a pn-junction. We will than have some band
bending at zero external voltage, flat band conditions for a non-zero external
voltage, and concomitant adjustments in the charges on both sides. |
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But while this complicates the situation, as do
unavoidable fixed immobile charges in the dielectric or in the
Si-dielectric interface, nothing new is added. |
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Now, the decisive part is achieving
inversion. It is clear that this needs some minimum threshold voltage
Uth, and from the pictures above, it is also clear
that this request translates into a request for some minimum charge on the capacitor formed by the gate
electrode, the dielectric and the Si substrate. |
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What determines the amount of charge we have in this system?
Well, since the whole assembly for any distribution of the charge can always be
treated as a simple capacitor CG, we have for the
charge of this capacitor, . |
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Since we want Uth to be small, we
want a large gate capacitance for a large
charge QG, and now we must ask: What determines
CG? |
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If all charges would be concentrated right at the
interfaces, the capacitance per area unit
would be given simply by the geometry of the resultant plate capacitor to |
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With dOx = thickness of the gate
dielectric, (so far) always silicon dioxide SiO2. |
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Since our charges are somewhat spread out in the
substrate (we may neglect this in the gate electrode if we use metals or very
highly doped Si), we must take this into account. |
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In electrical terms, we simply have a second capacitor
CSi describing the effects of spread charges in the
Si, switched in series to the geometric capacitor which we now call
oxide capacitance
COx. It will
be rather large for concentrated charges, i.e. for accumulation and inversion
and small for depletion. |
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The total capacitance CG then is
given by |
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For inversion and accumulation, when the most of
the charge is close to the interface, the total capacitance will be dominated
by COx. It is relatively large, because the thickness
of the capacitor is small. |
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In the depletion range, CSi will be
largest and the total capacitance reaches a minimum. |
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In total, CG as a
function of the voltage, i.e. CG(U) runs from a
constant value at large positive voltages through a minimum back to about the
same constant value at large positive voltages. The resulting curve contains
all relevant information about the system. Measuring
CG(U) is thus the first thing you do when
working with MOS contacts. There is a
special
module to C(U) techniques in the Hyperscript
"Semiconductors". |
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While it is not extremely easy to calculate the capacitance
values and everything else that goes with it,
it
can be done - just solve the
Poisson
equation for the problem. |
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All things considered, we want
COx to be large,
and that means we want the dielectric to be thin and to have a large dielectric constant - as
stated above without justification. |
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We also want the dielectric to have a large
breakdown field
strength, no fixed charges in the volume, no interface charges, a very
small tg d; it also should be very stable, compatible with
Si technology, and cheap. |
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In other words, we wantedSiO2 - even so its
dielectric constant is just a mediocre 3.9 - for all those years of
microelectronic wonders. But now (2001), we want something better with
respect to dielectric constants. Much work is done, investigating, e.g.,
CeO2, Gd2O3,
ZrO2, Y2O3,
BaTiO3, BaO/SrO, and so on. And nobody knows today
(2002) which material will make the race! |
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In 2007 we know more: It'sHfO2; at
least for Intel. For reasons of ist own, Intel talks about Hafnium
"metal", which makes no sense whatsoever |
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© H. Föll (MaWi 2 Skript)