Photo-induced tunneling currents in MOS structures with various HfO2/SiO2 stacking dielectrics

In this study, the current conduction mechanisms of structures with tandem high-k dielectric in illumination are discussed. Samples of Al/SiO2/Si (S), Al/HfO2/SiO2/Si (H), and Al/3HfO2/SiO2/Si (3H) were examined. The significant observation of electron traps of sample H compares to sample S is found under the double bias capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements in illumination. Moreover, the photo absorption sensitivity of sample H is higher than S due to the formation of HfO2 dielectric layer, which leads to larger numbers of carriers crowded through the sweep of VG before the domination of tunneling current. Additionally, the HfO2 dielectric layer would block the electrons passing through oxide from valance band, which would result in less electron-hole (e−-h+) pairs recombination effect. Also, it was found that both of the samples S and H show perimeter dependency of positive bias currents due to strong fringing field effect in dark and illumination; while sample 3H shows area dependency of positive bias currents in strong illumination. The non-uniform tunneling current through thin dielectric and through HfO2 stacking layers are importance to MOS(p) tunneling photo diodes.