A Review on Conduction Mechanisms in Dielectric Films

The conduction mechanisms in dielectric films are crucial to the successful applications of dielectric materials. There are two types of conduction mechanisms in dielectric films, that is, electrode-limited conduction mechanism and bulk-limited conduction mechanism. The electrode-limited conduction mechanism depends on the electrical properties at the electrode-dielectric interface. Based on this type of conduction mechanism, the physical properties of the barrier height at the electrode-dielectric interface and the effective mass of the conduction carriers in dielectric films can be extracted. The bulk-limited conduction mechanism depends on the electrical properties of the dielectric itself. According to the analyses of bulk-limited conduction mechanisms, several important physical parameters in the dielectric films can be obtained, including the trap level, the trap spacing, the trap density, the carrier drift mobility, the dielectric relaxation time, and the density of states in the conduction band. In this paper, the analytical methods of conduction mechanisms in dielectric films are discussed in detail.