Anode hole injection and stress induced leakage current decay in metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors

It is known that stress induced leakage current created by Fowler-Nordheim injection in Si/SiO2 structures has a component which increases drastically as the oxide thickness decreases. In the literature this component is cons idered to be a reproducible de component. Nevertheless recent measurements have shown that this component decays continuously when a non-stressing fie ld is applied on the sample. The decay is irreversible as long as the sampl e undergoes no further stressing. This paper reports complementary informat ion about this phenomenon. The magnitude of the decay is studied as a funct ion of the stress field polarity, the non-stressing field magnitude and pol arity, and the measurement field polarity. Our conclusion is that the stres s induced leakage current decay is triggered by holes of low energy injecte d from the anode. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.