Effect of capacitance-voltage sweep on the flat-band voltage of metal-oxide-semiconductor device with high-k gate dielectric

The capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics with and without light-illumination were evaluated for a capacitor with a Pt gate on the atomic-layer-deposited HfO2 dielectric. The flat-band voltage (V-fb) is conventionally determined by a C-V curve. However, the extracted values of V-fb were dependent on the C-V sweep direction and the starting voltage of the sweep (V-start) The increasing differences between V-start and intrinsic V-fb (V-fb.i) results in the increasing deviations of V-fb front V-fb.i. Therefore. the value of V-start should be close to V-fb,V-i and different values of V-start must be applied to the devices with significantly different V-fb.i.