Journal of Computational Electronics 3: 439–442, 2004

c 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Numerical Simulation for Direct Tunneling Current in Poly-Si-Gate MOS

Capacitors

M. OKAMOTO AND N. MORI

Department of Electronic Engineering, Osaka University, Suita City, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
masateru@ele.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp

Abstract. We have numerically simulated gate tunneling current in MOS capacitors. Price has demonstrated that
the Gamow formulation can be applied to analysis of the escape of electrons from channel into gate in MOSFETs
[P.J. Price, Appl. Phys. Lett., 82, 2080 (2003)]. We have integrated the Gamow method into a Schrödinger-Poisson
solver for metal-gate and poly-Si-gate n-type MOS capacitors. The numerical results of the tunneling current are
then compared with experimental results.

Keywords: gate tunneling current, Gamow method, MOSFET

1. Introduction the lifetime associated with quasi-confined states. Rana

To provide adequate control of short channel effects,
gate-oxide thickness of MOSFETs is reduced nearly in
proportion to channel length. For sub-100 nm chan-
nel length, oxide thickness, tox , of less than a few
nm is needed. In such a device, gate current is sig-
nificant even for a low gate bias region due to direct
tunneling of electrons through the gate-oxide layer.
This affects not only the device performance but also
the standby power consumption of a highly integrated
chip. Thus, accurately evaluating the tunneling current
is important for the development of advanced MOS
devices.
In the phenomenon of the direct tunneling in MOS-
FETs, the tunneling process differs from the conven-
tional tunneling. The theory for conventional tunneling
generally applies to situations where incident waves are
extended. This gives us a tunneling probability for the
incident wave to tunnel through a barrier. For the gate
tunneling, incident electrons are confined by a potential
well between the gate-oxide and the substrate. There-
fore, it is difficult to apply the conventional tunneling
theory to a phenomenon such as the gate tunneling in
MOSFETs.
To solve this difficulty, several models of gate tun-
neling current have been developed, which introduce
et al. calculated the lifetime using a path integral ex-
pansion of the resolvent operator [1]. Theoretical mod-
eling based on a quantum-mechanical approach to the
gate tunneling has also been reported [2–4].Recently,
Price proposed a quantum-mechanical approach based
on the Gamow method [5–7]. This approach requires
fewer computational resources.
In the present study, we have integrated the Gamow
method into a Schrödinger-Poisson solver for metal-
gate and poly-Si-gate n-type MOS capacitors. We es-
pecially focus on an adequate boundary conditions of
the Gamow method for poly-Si-gate devices, in which
we need to properly take into account a depletion-layer
in the gate electrode.
2. Gamow Method
The direct tunneling through the gate-oxide layer in
MOSFETs has the same physical basis as the alpha
decay, and the Gamow method can be applied to the
gate tunneling problem in MOSFETs [6]. The Gamow
method, in the alpha-emission case, is formalism for a
tunneling decay rate. For the gate tunneling in MOS-
FETs, we obtain a tunneling rate per unit time λ [6,7].
Using the tunneling rate λ, the gate tunneling current,
440 Okamoto
Figure 1. Schematic potential profile for a metal-gate MOS capac-
itor.
J , is given by
J = eλNinv ,
where e is the elementary charge and Ninv is surface
carrier density in the inversion layer. Detailed discus-
sion of the Gamow method can be found in Ref. [6] and
we will briefly explain the formalism for completeness.
In the Gamow method for a MOS capacitor, the sys-
tem is divided into two parts at a certain point, z = z 0
(we define the z-direction as the direction perpendicu-
lar to the gate plane). There exist a quasi-confined state
for z > z 0 and an outgoing state for z < z 0 . For a
metal-gate n-type MOS capacitor, a natural choice of
z 0 is the interface between the gate and oxide layers
(see Fig. 1).
The quasi-confined state is associated with the quasi-
confined wavefunction, (z), which is given by the
one-dimensional Schrödinger equation subject to the
potential. For real E, the wavefunction, (z), can be
taken as real, which is normalized in z > z 0 . For (z),
we define
1 ∂(z)
G(z, E) = . (2)
(z) ∂z
For the outgoing state, the wavefunction becomes a
plane wave, e−ikz . These wavefunctions should be con-
tinuous at the boundary z 0 . Hence we obtain from
Eq. (2)
−ik = G(z 0 , E).
To satisfy Eq. (3), we introduce a small imaginary part
of the energy; E ⇒ E − i 12 hλ. The tunneling rate is
then given by

∞
1 m 1
=  2 (z)dz. (4)
λ hk  (z 0 )
2
z0
Here m is the effective mass in the gate electrode. The
required boundary condition for  is

d 
= 0. (5)
dz z=z0
3. Application to Poly-Si-Gate MOS Capacitors
For a poly-Si-gate electrode, a depletion layer is formed
in the gate region because the electron density in poly-
Si is much smaller than that in metal. Since the potential
bends near the interface between the gate electrode and
the oxide layer (see Fig. 2), we cannot directly apply the
Gamow method described in Section 2 to a poly-Si-gate
(1)
MOS capacitor. We examine the following two types
of the boundary conditions for the Gamow method in
order to properly take into account the gate depletion
layer.
Method 1. In this method we choose z D (see Fig. 2)
as the boundary point between the quasi-confined
Figure 2. Schematic potential profile for a poly-Si-gate MOS ca-
pacitor. z I is the interface position between the gate electrode and the
oxide layer, and z D is the point to which the electric field penetrates
(3) into the gate.