A model for internal photoemission at high-k oxide/silicon energy barriers

Journal article, 2012

A model has been developed to describe the emission of electrons from silicon across the oxide energy barrier of metal-oxide-silicon structures. An optical absorption coefficient, exclusively describing the transmission of electrons which are emitted across the barrier, is split from the corresponding experimental quantity for the entire absorption range. This makes it possible to approximate the photo yield in terms of absorption coefficients and density of states without need for explicitly calculated matrix elements of optical transitions. Using this method, theoretical emission yield curves are found in good agreement with measured data. An important conclusion from this work is that values of oxide energy barrier heights should be extracted from different features of the yield data than most often done in the literature. This replaces a commonly used practice for determining the barrier heights, which is shown to be based on optical bulk properties of the silicon crystal.