The effects of oxide traps on the MOS capacitance

The trapping of electrons and holes at a semiconductor surface by traps located in the oxide adjacent to the semiconductor has been considered. It is shown that the effective capture cross section of an oxide trap viewed by a carrier at the semiconductor surface is reduced by a factor which increases exponentially with the distance the trap is located from the interface. A pseudo-Fermi function in this position variable is developed which gives the probability that a trap will be filled (or emptied) in a measurement time, T
m
. The trapping kinetics developed in the first part of the paper are applied to yield the full frequency and bias dependence of an MOS capacitor for an arbitrary spatial and energy trap distribution. Specific examples are given and the problem of voltage hysteresis is dealt with quantitatively. The conclusion is that very little information about the energy distribution and capture cross sections of the oxide traps is obtained from the analysis of MOS-capacitance curves.