Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-23T14:10:50.182Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Characterization of oxide/silicon energy band alignment: internal photoemission and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

from Part II - Characterization techniques

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2014

Olof Engström
Olof Engström
Affiliation:
Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenberg
Get access

Summary

Internal photoemission

Basic principles

Internal photoemission (IPE) measures the electric current generated by the optical excitation of charge carriers to energies exceeding an energy barrier in order to find the lowest photon energy needed for the process. This energy corresponds to the energy offset limiting carrier escape. Together with X-ray photon spectroscopy (XPS), described in Section 8.2, IPE has become an important method for the experimental determination of energy barrier heights in MOS systems (Afanas’ev and Stesmans, 2007; Afanas’ev, 2008).

The energy scales for thermal processes, discussed in earlier chapters, are to be considered as averages across particle ensembles motivating the introduction of thermodynamic concepts, for example Gibbs free energy, denoted G. Optical excitations, which are the basis of photoemission processes, take place between photons and specific eigenstates. Therefore, the energy quantities may differ from those of thermal processes and will be denoted E in this chapter.

The first theoretical treatment of this physical effect was developed by Fowler (1931) for the escape of electrons from a metal into vacuum. The method has been commonly used for establishing the work functions of metals and the heights of Schottky barriers, using various levels of complexity for the interpretation of measured data (Williams, 1970; Dalal, 1971; Engström et al., 1986). In a MOS structure, the alignments between energy bands of the oxide and the semiconductor and between the metal and the oxide can be measured using the same principle.

Type
Chapter
Information
The MOS System , pp. 196 - 220
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adamchuk, V. K. and Afanas’ev, V. V. (1992). Internal photoemission spectroscopy of semiconductor-insulator interfaces. Progr. Surf. Sci. 41, 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Afanas’ev, V. V. (2008). Internal Photoemission Spectroscopy. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Afanas’ev, V. V. and Stesmans, A. (2007). Internal photoemission at interfaces of high-k insulators with semiconductors and metals. J. Appl. Phys. 102, 1301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, F. G. and Gobeli, G. W. (1966). Energy structure in photoelectric emission from Cs covered silicon and germanium. Phys. Rev. 139, 575.Google Scholar
Aspnes, D. E. and Studna, A. A. (1983). Dielectric functions and optical parameters of Si, Ge, GaP, GaAs, GaSb, InP, InAs and InSb from 1.5 to 6.0 eV. Phys. Rev. B27, 985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bersch, E., Di, M., Consiglio, S., Clark, R. D., Leusink, G. J. and Diebold, A. C. (2010). Complete band offset characterization of the HfO2/SiO2/Si stack using charge corrected x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. J. Appl. Phys. 107, 043702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burst, D. (1965). Band-theoretic model for the photoelectric effect in silicon. Phys. Rev. 139, A489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, S. A., Droubay, T., Kaspar, T. C. and Gutowski, M. (2004). Experimental determination of valence band maxima for SrTiO3, TiO2, and SrO and the associated valence band offsets with Si(001). J. Vac. Sci. Technol. 22, 2205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalal, V. L. (1971). Simple model for internal photoemission. J. Appl. Phys. 42, 2274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engström, O. (2012). A model for internal photoemission at high-k oxide/silicon barriers. J. Appl. Phys. 112, 064115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engström, O. (2013). Response to “Comment on ‘A model for internal photoemission at high-k oxide/silicon energy barriers’”. J. Appl. Phys. 113, 166102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engström, O., Pettersson, H. and Sernelius, B. (1986) Photoelectric yield spectra of metal-semiconductor structures. Phys. Stat. Sol. (A) 95, 691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engström, O., Przewlocki, H. M., Mitrovic, I. Z. and Hall, S. (2014). Internal photoemission technique for high-k oxide/semiconductor band offset determination: the influence of semiconductor bulk properties. Accepted for publication in Proc. ESSDERC 2014.CrossRef
Fowler, R. H. (1931). The analysis of photoelectric sensitivity curves for clean metals at various temperatures. Phys. Rev. 38, 45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grunthaner, F. J. and Grunthaner, P. J. (1986). Chemical and electronic structure of the SiO2/Si interface. Mat. Sci. Reports 1, 65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kane, E. O. (1962). Theory of photoelectric emission from semiconductors. Phys. Rev. 127, 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraut, E. A., Grant, R. W., Waldrop, J. R. and Kowalczyk, S. P. (1983). Semiconductor core level valence band maximum binding-energy differences: Precise determination by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Phys. Rev. B 28, 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitrovic, I. Z., Hall, S., Sedghi, N. et al. (2012). On the nature of the interfacial layer in ultrathin TiN/LaLuO3 gate stacks. J. Appl. Phys. 112, 044102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noffsinger, J., Kioupakis, E., Van de Walle, C. G., Louie, S. G. and Cohen, M. L. (2012). Phonon assisted optical absorption in silicon from first principles. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 167104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Perego, M. and Seguini, G. (2011). Charging phenomena in dielectric/semiconductor heterostructures during x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements. J. Appl. Phys. 110, 053711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, R. J. (1970). Interface barrier determination from voltage dependence of photoinjected currents. J. Appl. Phys. 41, 2424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Przewlocki, H. M., Gutt, T., Piskorski, K. and Bakowski, M. (2013). Band diagram and trap distributions in metal-SiO2-SiC(3C) structures with different metal gates. ECS Trans. 50, 231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raeissi, B., Piscator, J., Chen, Y. Y. and Engström, O. (2011). Characterization of traps in the transition region at the HfO2/SiOx interface by thermally stimulated currents. J. Electrochem. Soc. 158, G63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siegbahn, M. and Edvarson, K. (1956). β-Ray spectroscopy in the precision range of 1:105. Nucl. Phys. 1, 137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stukel, D. J. and Euwema, R. N. (1970). Self-consistent orthogonalized-plane-wave energy band structure of silicon. Phys. Rev. B 1, 1635.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swift, P. (1982). Adventitious carbon – the panacea for energy referencing?Surface Interface Anal. 4, 47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sze, S. M. (1981). Physics of Semiconductor Devices, 2nd edn. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, p. 250.Google Scholar
Williams, R. (1970). Injection by internal photoemission. In Semiconductors and Semimetals: Injection Phenomena. Willardson, R. K. and Beer, A. C., eds. New York: Academic Press, Chapter 2.Google Scholar
Xiong, K., Robertson, J., Gibson, M. C. and Clark, S. J. (2005). Defect energy levels in HfO2 high-dielectric-constant gate oxide. Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 183505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×