Effect of gate impurity concentration on inversion-layer mobility in MOSFETs with ultrathin gate oxide layer

In this paper, the influence of poly-Si-gate impurity concentration, N/sub poly/, on inversion-layer electron mobility is experimentally investigated in MOSFETs with ultrathin gate oxide layer. The split capacitance-voltage C-V method is modified to directly measure an effective mobility, paying attention to both 1) accurate current-voltage I-V and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements with high gate leakage current and 2) correct surface carrier density, N/sub s/, estimation at a finite drain bias. It is demonstrated that the mobility in ultrathin gate oxides becomes low significantly for highly doped gate, strongly suggesting the contribution of remote Coulomb scattering due to the gate impurities, which is quantitatively discriminated from that of Coulomb scattering due to substrate impurities and interface states. It is also found that the mobility lowering becomes significant rapidly at T/sub ox/ of 1.5 nm or less. The mobility-lowering component is weakly dependent on N/sub s/, irrespective of N/sub poly/, which cannot be fully explained by the existing theoretical models of remote impurity scattering.