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Electrical Characterization of Semiconductor Materials and Devices

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Abstract

Semiconductor materials and devices continue to occupy a preeminent technological position due to their importance when building integrated electronic systems used in a wide range of applications from computers, cell-phones, personal digital assistants, digital cameras and electronic entertainment systems, to electronic instrumentation for medical diagnositics and environmental monitoring. Key ingredients of this technological dominance have been the rapid advances made in the quality and processing of materials – semiconductors, conductors and dielectrics – which have given metal oxide semiconductor device technology its important characteristics of negligible standby power dissipation, good input–output isolation, surface potential control and reliable operation. However, when assessing material quality and device reliability, it is important to have fast, nondestructive, accurate and easy-to-use electrical characterization techniques available, so that important parameters such as carrier doping density, type and mobility of carriers, interface quality, oxide trap density, semiconductor bulk defect density, contact and other parasitic resistances and oxide electrical integrity can be determined. This chapter describes some of the more widely employed and popular techniques that are used to determine these important parameters. The techniques presented in this chapter range in both complexity and test structure requirements from simple current–voltage measurements to more sophisticated low-frequency noise, charge pumping and deep-level transient spectroscopy techniques.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to Drs. O. Marinov and D. Landheer for their careful review of the manuscript and their assistance. They are also grateful to several previous students and researchers whose collaborative research is discussed here. Finally, they are grateful to NSERC of Canada, the Canada Research Chair program and the CNRS of France for supporting this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

    M. Jamal Deen

  2. Institute of Electronic and Systems, University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Fabien Pascal

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  1. M. Jamal Deen
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  2. Fabien Pascal
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Correspondence to M. Jamal Deen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Safa Kasap

  2. Formerly with Leonardo MW Ltd, Southampton, UK

    Peter Capper

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Deen, M.J., Pascal, F. (2017). Electrical Characterization of Semiconductor Materials and Devices. In: Kasap, S., Capper, P. (eds) Springer Handbook of Electronic and Photonic Materials. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48933-9_20

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