Design optimization of stacked layer dielectrics for minimum gate leakage currents

An effective model to evaluate the leakage currents for different stacked g ates deep submicron MOS transistors is presented. For a given equivalent ox ide thickness of a stacked gate, the gate leakage current decreases with an increase of high-k dielectric thickness or a decrease of interlayer thickn ess. Turning points at high gate biases of the I-V curves are observed for Si3N4SiO2, Ta2O5/SiO2, Ta2O5/SiO2-yNy, Ta2O5/Si3N4, and TiO2/SiO2 stacked g ates except for Al2O3/SiO2 structure, Design optimization fur the stacked g ate architecture to obtain the minimum gate leakage current is evaluated. ( C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.