Temporal and Dose Kinetics of Tunnel Relaxation of Non-Equilibrium Near-Interfacial Charged Defects in Insulators

TL;DR

This paper develops a mathematical model for the tunnel relaxation of charged oxide traps near interfaces in insulators, analyzing their kinetics and responses under various annealing conditions in irradiated MOS devices.

Contribution

It introduces a generic response function for tunnel annealing based on rate equations, enabling analysis of complex relaxation phenomena in insulator-channel interfaces.

Findings

Derived a linear superposition model for defect response

Analyzed combined tunnel and thermal annealing effects

Described power-like relaxation after ion strikes

Abstract

This paper is devoted mainly to mathematical aspects of modeling and simulation of tunnel relaxation of nonequilibrium charged oxide traps located at/near the interface insulator - conductive channel, for instance in irradiated MOS devices. The generic form of the tunnel annealing response function was derived from the rate equation for the charged defect buildup and annealing as a linear superposition of the responses of different defects with different time constants. Using this linear response function, a number of important practical problems are analyzed and discussed. Combined tunnel and thermal or RICN annealing, power-like temporal relaxation after a single ion strike into the gate oxide, are described in context of general approach.