Study of charge control and gate tunneling in a ferroelectric-oxide-silicon field effect transistor: Comparison with a conventional metal-oxide- silicon structure

It is known that conventional metal-oxide-silicon ~MOS! devices will have gate tunneling related problems at very thin oxide thicknesses. Various high-dielectric-constant materials are being examined to suppress the gate currents. In this article we present theoretical results of a charge control and gate tunneling model for a ferroelectric-oxide-silicon field effect transistor and compare them to results for a conventional MOS device. The potential of high polarization charge to induce inversion without doping and high dielectric constant to suppress tunneling current is explored. The model is based on a self-consistent solution of the quantum problem and includes the ferroelectric hysteresis response self-consistently. We show that the polarization charge associated with ferroelectrics can allow greater controllability of the inversion layer charge density. Also the high dielectric constant of ferroelectrics results in greatly suppressed gate current. © 2001 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1332425#