The charge storage of the nc—Si layer

Sandwiched structures (a-SiN_x/a-Si/a-SiN_x) have been fabricated by the plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition technique. A Si nanocrystal (nc-Si) layer was formed by crystallization of an a-Si layer according to the constrained crystallization principle after quasi-static thermal annealing at 1100℃ for 30 min. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Raman scattering spectroscopy clearly demonstrated that nc-Si grains were formed in the as-deposited a-Si layer after annealing. The density of nc-Si grains is about 10¹¹cm^-2 as shown by TEM photographs. Using capacitance－voltage (C－V) measurements we investigated the electrical characteristics of the sandwiched structures. The charge storage phenomenon of the nc-Si layer was observed from the shift of flat-band voltage (V_FB) in C－V curves at a high frequency (1 MHz). We estimated the density of nc-Si grains to be about 10¹¹cm^-2 from the shift value of V_FB, which is in agreement with the result of TEM photographs. At the same time, we found that the shift of V_FB increased with the increase of the applied constant dc voltage or the thickness of the nc-Si layer.