Investigation of charging mechanisms in metal-insulator-metal structures

In this paper we have investigated the temperature dependence of the charging effects in Metal-Insulator-Metal structures, aiming to obtain a better insight on the charging mechanism of RF-MEMS switch insulating layer. The accumulated charge kinetics have been monitored through the transient response of the depolarization current. The transient response is shown to follow rather a stretched exponential law. The time scale of the process is found to be thermally activated with activation energy determined by Arrhenius plot. The results have been compared to thermally stimulated depolarization current assessment.