2.

4 Nonideal I-V Effects 83

there is a nonzero probability that an electron in the gate will find itself on the wrong
side of the oxide, where it will get whisked away through the channel. This effect of car-
riers crossing a thin barrier is called tunneling, and results in leakage current through
the gate.
Two physical mechanisms for gate tunneling are called Fowler-Nordheim (FN) tunnel-
ing and direct tunneling. FN tunneling is most important at high voltage and moderate
oxide thickness and is used to program EEPROM memories (see Section 12.4). Direct
tunneling is most important at lower voltage with thin oxides and is the dominant leakage
component.
The direct gate tunneling current can be estimated as [Chandrakasan01]
2 t
© V ¹  B ox (2.47)
I gate = WA ª DD º e V DD
« t ox »
where A and B are technology constants.
Transistors need high Cox to deliver good ON current, driving the decrease in oxide
thickness. Tunneling current drops exponentially with the oxide thickness and has only
recently become significant. Figure 2.21 plots gate leakage current density (current/area)
JG against voltage for various oxide thicknesses. Gate leakage increases by a factor of 2.7
or more per angstrom reduction in thickness [Rohrer05]. Large tunneling currents
impact not only dynamic nodes but also quiescent power consumption and thus limits
equivalent oxide thicknesses tox to at least 10.5 Å to keep gate leakage below 100 A/cm2.
To keep these dimensions in perspective, recall that each atomic layer of SiO2 is about 3
Å, so such gate oxides are a handful of atomic layers thick. Section 3.4.1.3 describes
innovations in gate insulators with higher dielectric constants that offer good Cox while
reducing tunneling.
Tunneling current can be an order of magnitude higher for nMOS than pMOS tran-
sistors with SiO2 gate dielectrics because the electrons tunnel from the conduction band
while the holes tunnel from the valence band and see a higher barrier [Hamzaoglu02].
Different dielectrics may have different tunneling properties.

109
tox
VDD trend 6Å
106
8Å
10 Å
103
12 Å
JG (A/cm2)

100 15 Å
19 Å
10–3

10–6

10–9
0 0.3 0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8
VDD
FIGURE 2.21 Gate leakage current from [Song01]