Charging and Discharging Characteristics of Stacked Floating Gates of Silicon Quantum Dots

We have fabricated Al-gate MOS capacitors with a Si quantum-dots (Si-QDs) floating gate, the number of dots was changed in the range of 1.6-4.8 x 10 11 cm -2 in areal density with repeating the formation of Si dots and their surface oxidation a couple of times. The capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics of Si-QDs floating gate MOS capacitors on p-Si(100) confirm that, with increasing number of dots density, the flat-band voltage shift due to electron charging in Si-QDs is increased and the accumulation capacitance is decreased. Also, in the negative bias region beyond the flat-band condition, the voltage shift in the C-V curves due to the emission of valence electrons from intrinsic Si-QDs was observed with no hysterisis presumably because holes generated in Si-QDs can smoothly recombine with electrons tunneling through the 2.8 nm-thick bottom SiO 2 . In addition, we have demonstrated the charge retention characteristic improves in the Si-QDs stacked structure.