Local charge trapping and detection of trapped charge by scanning capacitance microscope in the SiO2/Si system

Charge trapping induced by hot carriers in a metal-oxide-semiconductor capa citor was studied with a scanning capacitance microscope (SCM). The local c harge trapping/detrapping and the readout of the trapped charge in SiO2 was performed using a SCM combined with an atomic force microscope. When apply ing a voltage between the conductive probe tip and the p-type silicon subst rate, hot carriers injected from silicon substrate into the SiO2 generated a positive trapped charge in the 10-nm-thick SiO2 layer. The resulting shif t in capacitance-voltage (C-V) curves due to the locally trapped charge was measured by the high-frequency C-V measurement. For an application to the ultrahigh density data storage field, we investigated how the charge trappi ng and detrapping characteristics depend on the writing speed and bias volt age. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)04938-4].