Permittivity enhancement of aluminum oxide thin films with the addition of silver nanoparticles

Multilayer reactive electron-beam evaporation of thin aluminum oxide layers with embedded silver nanoparticles (Ag-nps) has been used to create a dielectric thin film with an enhanced permittivity. The results show a frequency dependent increase of the dielectric constant κ. Overall stack κ of the control sample was found to be 7.7–7.4 in the 1kHz–1MHz range. This is in comparison with κ=16.7–13.0 over the same frequency range in the sample with Ag-nps. Capacitance-voltage and conductance-voltage measurements indicate the presence of charge capture resulting from the Ag-nps. The authors attribute this dielectric constant enhancement to dipole and space charge polarization mechanisms.