Water vapour sorption by mim systems

In studying the properties of the sandwich system Al-Al₂O₃-Au(Al) the capacitance of the system was found to depend on the humidity of the environment. The humidity induced capacitance change is reversible and can be explained assuming a process of physical sorption of water vapours by Al₂O₃ dielectric film. The sorption rate is independent of the oxide film thickness, which leads to a conclusion that mainly the sorption in the surface layer of the oxide is involved in the process. The sorption rate is, however, decreasing with increasing thickness of the upper evaporated electrode, which can be taken as an evidence of the fact that the water molecules penetrate to the oxide films through the upper metal layer whose coverage is not complete due to the porosity of the oxide film underneath.On the basis of our experimental results we come to a conclusion that even when the Al₂O₃ films are prepared by oxidation in a 3% solution of tartaric acid, their structure is porous. Proceeding from a simplified picture of the dielectric structure we propose an equivalent electrical scheme of the Al-Al₂O₃-Au Al system. The frequency characteristics measured at different environment humidities correspond to the dependences calculated for the proposed equivalent circuit.