Dipole-induced gate leakage reduction in scaled MOSFETs with a highly doped polysilicon/nitrided oxide gate stack

Gate leakage current is reduced up to 24% using a highly doped polysilicon gate/nitrided oxide gate stack. Interestingly, various factors that could affect the gate leakage current such as equivalent oxide thickness (EOT), overlap capacitance, gate dielectric reliability and sub-threshold voltage were found to be unrelated to the reduction in leakage current. Instead, an additional band offset due to an interfacial dipole at the highly doped …