Room temperature electron tunneling and storage in a nanocrystalline silicon floating gate structure

Abstract By using capacitance–voltage and conductance–voltage measurements, we studied electron tunneling and storage in a nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) floating gate double-barrier structure (SiO 2 /nc-Si/SiO 2 ), which is fabricated in situ by plasma oxidation and layer-by-layer deposition technique in a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system. Frequency-dependent capacitance peaks due to electron resonant tunneling into quantum confinement energy levels of nc-Si dots and Coulomb blockade charging in nc-Si dots have been observed for the first time at room temperature in SiO 2 /nc-Si/SiO 2 system by capacitance spectroscopy. Meanwhile, conductance plateau in the region of capacitance peaks are also observed due to charging effect in nc-Si dots. Experimental results are in agreement with theoretical evaluation based on the model of Coulomb blockade.