First principles study of band line up at defective metal-oxide interface: oxygen point defects at Al/SiO_2 interface

TL;DR

This study investigates how oxygen vacancies at the Al/SiO2 interface affect electronic band alignment, revealing that defects significantly alter tunneling properties critical for device reliability.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed first-principles analysis of oxygen defect effects on band lineup at the Al/SiO2 interface using hybrid DFT methods.

Findings

Defects and their charge states strongly modify band alignment.

Oxygen vacancies influence electron tunneling behavior.

Defect presence is crucial for realistic device modeling.

Abstract

The dielectric breakdown at metal-oxide interfaces is a critical electronic device failure mechanism. Electronic tunneling through dielectric layers is a well-accepted explanation for this phenomenon. Theoretical band alignment studies, providing information about tunneling, have already been conducted in the literature for metal-oxide interfaces. However, most of the time materials were assumed defect free. Oxygen vacancies being very common in oxides, their effect on band lineup is of prime importance in understanding electron tunneling in realistic materials and devices. This work explores the effect of oxygen vacancy and oxygen di-vacancy at the Al/SiO2 interface on the band line up within Density Functional Theory using PBE0 hybrid exchange and correlation functional. It is found that the presence of defects at the interface, and their charge state, strongly alters the band line up.