Identification of the transient stress-induced leakage current in silicon dioxide films for use in microelectromechanical systems capacitive switches
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Published Version
Date
2015
Authors
Ryan, Cormac
Olszewski, Oskar Zbigniew
Houlihan, Ruth
O'Mahony, Conor
Blake, Alan
Duane, Russell
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AIP Publishing
Published Version
Abstract
Dielectric charging at low electric fields is characterized on radio-frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS) capacitive switches. The dielectric under investigation is silicon dioxide deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The switch membrane is fabricated using a metal alloy which is shown to be mechanically robust. In the absence of mechanical degradation, these capacitive switches are appropriate test structures for the study of dielectric charging in MEMS devices. Monitoring the shift and recovery of device capacitance-voltage characteristics revealed the presence of a charging mechanism which takes place across the bottom metal-dielectric interface. Current measurements on metal-insulator-metal devices confirmed the presence of interfacial charging and discharging transient currents. The field-and temperature-dependence of these currents is the same as the well-known transient stress-induced leakage current (SILC) observed in flash memory devices. A simple model was created based on established transient SILC theory which accurately fits the measured data and reveals that charge exchange at the bottom metal-dielectric interface is responsible for charging currents and pull-in voltage changes in these MEMS devices. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.
Description
Keywords
Oxide traps , Mems , Dependence , Microelectromechanical systems , Charged currents , Dielectric devices , Dielectric thin films , Charge exchange reactions
Citation
Ryan, C., Olszewski, Z., Houlihan, R., O'Mahony, C., Blake, A. and Duane, R. (2015) 'Identification of the transient stress-induced leakage current in silicon dioxide films for use in microelectromechanical systems capacitive switches', Applied Physics Letters, 106(17), pp. 172904. doi: 10.1063/1.4919718
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© 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in Ryan, C., Olszewski, Z., Houlihan, R., O'Mahony, C., Blake, A. and Duane, R. (2015) 'Identification of the transient stress-induced leakage current in silicon dioxide films for use in microelectromechanical systems capacitive switches', Applied Physics Letters, 106(17), pp. 172904 and may be found at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.4919718