Characteristics of the dynamics of breakdown filaments in Al2O3/InGaAs stacks

Abstract

In this paper, the Al2O3/InGaAs interface was studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) after a breakdown (BD) event at positive bias applied to the gate contact. The dynamics of the BD event were studied by comparable XPS measurements with different current compliance levels during the BD event. The overall results show that indium atoms from the substrate move towards the oxide by an electro-migration process and oxidize upon arrival following a power law dependence on the current compliance of the BD event. Such a result reveals the physical feature of the breakdown characteristics of III-V based metal-oxide-semiconductor devices.