A method to characterize the dielectric and interfacial properties of metal-insulator-semiconductor structures by microwave measurement

We have developed a method to investigate the dielectric and interfacial properties of gate dielectric thin films by microwave measurement. Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 (BST) thin films were deposited on 10 Omega cm (normal) and 10 k Omega cm [high-resistivity, (HR)] silicon substrates at the same time by rf magnetron sputtering. For the BST/HR-silicon, coplanar waveguides (CPW) were fabricated and measured at microwave frequencies with thru-reflect-line calibration while capacitance (C-V) measurements were carried out for BST/normal silicon. From the phase change of CPW transmission line and the maximum capacitance in C-V measurement, the dielectric constants of both the BST thin film and interface layer can be determined. Furthermore, the behaviors of insertion loss versus bias voltage were investigated. The results indicate that our method can provide useful information to study the dielectric and interfacial properties of metal-insulator-semiconductor structures. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.