Extraction of oxide thickness from harmonic distortion of displacement currents in MOS capacitors

This brief presents a new experimental technique to determine the thickness of (thin) insulator films from the analysis of the harmonic distortion of the displacement current due to the nonlinearity of the C-V characteristics of MOS capacitors. Such a method substantially improves the state of the art, as it overcomes the noise problem affecting a previous technique, particularly suitable for thin insulators since it operates in the virtual absence of tunneling current and other complex phenomena.