1888 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 40, NO.
10, OCTOBER 1993
Gate-Induced Drain Leakage Current in
MOS Devices
V. Nathan and N. C. Das
Abstract-The gate-induced drain leakage current (GIDL) in typical
n-channel MOSFET's is calculated for direct and indirect tunneling
from the valence band to the conduction band of silicon, as well as
tunneling from the conduction band minimum of silicon to the inter-
face traps, and compared to experimental data. The results show that
in silicon MOSFET's the GIDL is dominated by tunneling from the
conduction band to the interface traps, and the contribution from both
direct and indirect hand-to-band tunneling is negligible.
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently there has been considerable interest in understanding
the drain-induced leakage current in silicon MOSFET's [1]-[7].
This interest stems from the constraints that the GIDL imposes on
the scaling of oxide thickness and power supply voltages. Various
authors have attributed the GIDL to the tunneling of electrons from
the valence band of silicon into its conduction band. However, these
claims are based on qualitative agreement between the slopes of
the experimental and theoretical curves. Most of these papers do
not contain complete formulas for calculating the tunneling cur-
rent, or quantitative calculations of the tunneling current for com-
parison with experimental data. The one paper [4] where a com-
plete formula is presented contains an error, in that the
preexponential factor in the expression for the tunneling current is
relevant for the case of direct tunneling, while the exponential fac-
tor pertains to the indirect tunneling case. In this brief, we present
complete formulas to predict the tunneling currents due to direct
and indirect band-to-band tunneling, as well as for interface trap
assisted tunneling, and compare the predictions to recent experi-
mental data. The results show that in silicon MOSFET's, the GIDL
is controlled not by either direct or indirect band-to-band tunnel-
ing, but by interface trap assisted tunneling.
11. TUNNELING
THEORY
The complete formulas for both direct and indirect tunneling have
been worked out by Kane [8]. Direct tunneling occurs between two
extrema located at the same point in k space. The formula for the
resulting current density j is
(EI2)qV.
j = (qm,/ 18h3) exp [ - ~ ( m , )Ei.5/21.5qhc]
~.~ (1)
In ( l ) , q is the electronic charge, A is Planck's constant divided by
27r, ERis the energy gap of the semiconductor, E is the electric field,
Vis the applied bias, and m, is the reduced effective mass given by
l/m, = l / m v + l/mc, (2)
where m, and m, are the valence band and conduction band effec-
tive masses, respectively. Also, in ( l ) , E is an energy parameter
given by
E = 225qA~/3~(m,Eg)0.5. (3)
Manuscript received September 25, 1992; revised April 20, 1993. This
work was supported in part by an Air Force Materiel Command/National
Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associateship (NCD). The review
of this brief was arranged by Associate Editor K. Shenai.
The authors are with Phillips Laboratory, Passive Sensors Branch, 3550
Aberdeen Ave SE, Kirtland AFB, NM 871 17-5776.
IEEE Log Number 92 1092.
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The indirect tunneling takes place between the top of the valence
band and the bottom of the conduction band located at different
points in k space. In this case, the tunneling current density is given
by P I
j = AqV[(n + 1) exp (-B(Eg + A w ) ' . ~
+ n exp (-B(Eg - h ~ ) ' . ~ ] , (4)
where
n is the phonon occupation number, and
B = 22.5m:2/3hq~.
In (4), the first term inside the square bracket corresponds to tun-
neling accompanied by phonon emission, while the second term
corresponds to phonon absorption, w is the phonon frequency,and
the subscripts x, y, and 2 on the effective masses refer to their com-
ponents along these directions. M 2 is the square of the electron-
phonon interaction matrix element with units of energy2-length3and
is given by 191
M 2 = C2qh/2csp, (7)
where C is the coupling energy, c, is the speed of sound in the
material, and p is the mass density.
In addition to the direct and indirect band-to-band tunneling de-
scribed by (1)-(7), tunneling assisted by trap levels in the forbid-
den gap of the semiconductor is also possible. In this case, the
electron tunnels from the conduction band of silicon to the interface
traps, followed by a transition to the valence band [lo]. The re-
sulting current density will be the same as that given by (1) (for
direct tunneling) or (4) (for indirect tunneling) when the following
two modifications are made: 1) the energy gap Eg is replaced by ER
- E,, where E, is the trap energy measured from the valence band
edge (this accounts for the fact that the electrons have to tunnel
through a barrier of height Eg - E, only); and 2) the right-hand
side of equation (1) or (4) is multiplied by a factor (trap density of
stateshalence band density of states) (this factor accounts for the
fact that the tunneling takes place from the conduction band to the
trap states, and not to the valence band).
TO SILICON
111. APPLICATION MOSFET
Various expressions for the electric field E have been used by
different authors in the literature [I], [7], [ l l ] . We choose to em-
ploy the following well-founded approximation from [ 111 in our
calculations:
where vd and Vg are the drain and gate voltages, respectively, to,
is the thickness of the gate oxide, and W is the depletion width
[Ill.
The energy gap and effective mass appear in the exponential in
(1) and (4), and accurate values of these are necessary in order to
obtain reliable results. In this work, the temperature dependent in-
direct energy gap of silicon (in eV) was calculated from the equa-
tion 1121:
ER = 1.17 - 4.72 X x T2/(T + 636), (9)
 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 40, NO. 10, OCTOBER 1993 1889

TABLE I
LISTOF SYMBOLS

Symbol Quantity Units

current density A/mZ

electronic charge C
reduced effective mass free electron mass m,
valence band effective mass m0
conduction band effective mass m,
Planck’s constant/2n J - s
energy gap J
temperature K
electric field v/m
energy parameter J
phonon occupation number
electron-phonon interaction
parameter
electron-phonon coupling constant J
speed of sound m/s
mass density k/m3
drain voltage V
gate voltage V
depletion width m
phonon frequency s-’
oxide thickness m
experimental GIDL current A
direct interband tunneling current A
indirect interband tunneling current A
trap assisted tunneling current A

where T is the temperature, while the direct gap was assumed to
be constant at 3.5 eV. The effective mass of the conduction band
is given by
m, = (mcxmrymc~)(‘/3’, (10)
with m, = 0.98, and mcy = m,, = 0.19 [12]. The effective mass
of the valence band is isotropic, and is given by
where ??t,h and mhhare the light hole and heavy hole effective masses
with values of 0.16 and 0.49, respectively [12]. For silicon, M 2 is
of the order of erg2 cm3, and the phonon energy is approxi-
mately 60 meV [9].
In evaluating the trap assisted tunneling current, the trap energy
level, trap density, and valence band density of states are required.
It is assumed that the interface trap states serve the role of the final
states for the tunneling. It has been reported that the interface trap
distribution has peaks at 0.05 eV above the center of the indirect
gap [13]. In our calculations, we use this energy for E,. The areal
density of these interface traps is approximately 0.5 X 10”/cm2
[14], and since the interface traps are localized within 10 A from
the Si/Si02 interface [13], the volume density of interface traps is
approximately 0.5 X 10i7/cm3. The valence band density of states
(N,,) is calculated from the expression [ 121
Nu = 2(m,kT/2~h~)’.~,
where k is Boltzmann’s constant.
IV. EXPERIMENT
The n-channel MOSFET’s used in our experiments were fabri-
cated with n+ polygate using a radiation hardened process. The
oxide thickness, channel length, channel width, and junction depth
of the devices were 250 A, 1.0 p m , I 1 pm, and 0.25 pm, respec-
tively. The acceptor and donor densities were, respectively, 1.5 X
10’5/cm3, and 8 x lOI8/cm3. The devices were assembled in stan-
dard ceramic packages and mounted in a vacuum chamber. During
the measurements, a variable negative bias was applied to the gate,
while a positive bias of 7 V was applied to the drain, and the sub-
strate and source were grounded [15]. To determine the origin of
the off-state current, we measured all the four currents of the de-
vice, i.e., source, substrate, drain, and gate currents, as a function
of gate bias, using a Keithley 617 electrometer and HP 4145 par-
ametric analyzer. The tunneling current was found to flow between
the drain and substrate, while the gate and source currents were
found to be negligible.
V. RESULTS
The tunneling current densities due to direct interband tunneling,
indirect interband tunneling, trap assisted direct tunneling, and trap
assisted indirect tunneling were calculated with the help of equa-
tions (1)-(12) for several values of V = V g , and Vd = 7 V. From
these, the currents due to the above mechanisms were obtained by
multiplying j by the area of the drain-substrate junction close to
the gate where the tunneling takes place. This area is given by the
product of the drain width (1 1 p ) and junction depth (0.25 p ) . Table
I is a list of symbols used in this work. Table I1 shows the calcu-
lated values, along with the values of the measured GIDL current
for different gate biases, while the drain bias was kept constant at
7 V. In this table, I, I,, li,and I, are, respectively, the values of
the current obtained from the experiment, direct band-to-band tun-
neling calculation, indirect band-to-band tunneling calculation, and
trap assisted indirect tunneling calculation. It is seen that the cur-
rent due to direct and indirect band-to-band tunneling are many
orders of magnitude smaller than the measured current, while the
trap assisted tunneling current is larger than the experimental data
by a factor between three and six. This overestimation arises due
to the several approximations involved in the theoretical calcula-
tions, especially regarding the electric field, trap energy, and trap

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 1890 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 40, NO. IO, OCTOBER 1993

TABLE I1
OF CALCULATED
COMPARISON AND MEASURED
GIDL CURRENT I N n-CHANNEL MOSFET’S

- 1.0 2.9 x IO-’’ 6.7 x 9.5 x 1.8 X lo-’”

-1.2 4.2 x IO-’’ 8.8 x 2.4 x 2.7 x IO-”
-1.4 6.2 X IO-’’ 1.0 x 5.9 x lo-*’ 3.8 X IO-’’
- 1.6 9.2 x IO-’’ 1.1 x 1.4 x 1 0 - l ~ 5.3 x lo-”
- 1.8 1.4 X lo-’” 9.9 x 3.1 x 10-19 7.3 x lo-”
-2.0 2.2 x 8.5 x 6.7 x 1 0 - 1 ~ 9.9 x
-2.2 3.4 x lo-’” 6.6 X 1.4 x 1.4 x
-2.4 5.1 X IO-’’ 4.7 x IO-” 2.9 x 1.8 x
-2.6 7.8 x IO-’” 3.1 x 5.8 x IO-’’ 2.4 x IO-’
-2.8 1.2 x 1.9 x 1.1 x io-’’ 3.1 X
-3.0 1.5 x 1.1 x 2.1 x IO-’’ 4.0 x

density. In view of these, the agreement between trap assisted tun- A Study of the Electrical Series Resistance of Silicon
neling current and the experimental data should be considered good. IMPATT Diodes
The results definitely show that the gate induced drain leakage cur-
rent in silicon MOSFET’s arises from interface trap assisted tun- M. Mitra, M. Das, S. Kar, and S . K . Roy
neling, and not from band-to-band tunneling.

Abstract-A theoretical study on the relationship between the elec-

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trical series resistance (R,) of an IMPATT diode and the threshold cur-
rent for oscillation and the corresponding frequency has been carried
out, considering the inequality of the ionization rates and drift veloc-
ities of the two types of charge carriers in silicon. The series resistance
has been obtained experimentally by measuring the threshold current
for oscillation and the corresponding oscillation frequency with an
X-band silicon SDR device embedded in a resonant-cap cavity. The re-
sults indicate that the method is a suitable one for determining R,, and
agrees with the manufacturer’s data. The method would be suitable
for determining R,7for mm-wave diodes with appropriate values of the
ionization rate ratios at maximum electric field.
INTRODUCTION
Electrical series resistance (R,) is a critical device parameter lim-
iting the RF power output and efficiency in IMPATT diodes [ 11.
The negative resistance of microwave and millimeter-wave IM-
PATT diodes is in the range of only a few ohms. The positive
series resistance R, therefore has to be kept to the minimum pos-
sible value by appropriate technology in order to obtain oscillating
power from the device. A direct measurement of R, by a network
analyzer is difficult due to circuit modeling difficulties and network
analyzer error [2], [9]. In 1983, Adlerstein et al. [3] proposed a
simple technique of determining R, for IMPATT diodes from the
measurement of threshold current Ilh and the corresponding fre-
quency of oscillationfth, where 11, is the value of dc bias current at
which the oscillation just starts. However, their analysis corre-
sponds to a DDR IMPATT with symmetrical device structure (n
and p epilayers of identical width and doping) and for equal ion-
ization rates and drift velocities for electrons and holes. This is
approximately valid for GaAs DDR for a certain range of electric
field. In silicon, however, the electron and hole ionization rates are
Manuscript received October 8, 1992; revised May 5, 1993. This work
was supported by the Department of Electronics, Govemment of India, and
the University Grants Commission of India. The review of this brief was
arranged by Associate Editor M. D. Feuer.
The authors are with the Institute of Radiophysics and Electronics, 92
A.P.C. Road, Calcutta 700009, India.
IEEE Log Number 92 10903.

0018-9383/93$03.00 0 1993 IEEE

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