Avalanche injection and near avalanche injection of charge carriers into SiO2

A description is given of the avalanche injection of electrons from a p-n-junction into an adjacent SiO
2
layer. The resulting oxide current is found to decay due to the trapping of electrons in the SiO
2
. This decay can be characterized by the product of the concentration
N
of the trapping centers in the oxide and their capture cross section σ. We found
N \sigma = 1.7 \times 10^{-1}
cm
^-1
. In addition, near avalanche injection is described. Here the oxide current is found to depend exponentially on the shortest acceleration distance of the hot carriers and is characterized by the mean free path of these carriers. A new result for the mean free path of the hot holes (λ
h
= 42 Å) is given. Both types of injection find application in semiconductor memory cells.