Interfacial trapping for hot electron injection in silicon

Yuan Lu (1) , Daniel Lacour (1) , G. Lengaigne (1) , S. Le Gall (1) , S. Suire (1) , François Montaigne (1) , Michel Hehn (1)

1 IJL - Institut Jean Lamour

We have evidenced a new interfacial trapping phenomenon for hot electron injection in silicon by studying magnetic tunnel transistors (MTTs) with a MgO tunneling barrier emitter and a Cu/Si Shottky barrier collector. Transport measurements on hot electrons indicate that an interfacial charge trapping and a backscattering-induced collector current limitation take place with the MTT spin-valve base both in parallel and antiparallel states when the temperature is lower than 25 K, which results in a rapid decrease of the magnetocurrent ratio from similar to 2000% at 25K to 800% at 17 K. The binding energy of the trapped electron is estimated to be about 1.7 meV, which is also found to increase with the magnetic field. A simple analytic model considering the interfacial electron trapping and releasing is proposed to explain the experimental results.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Yuan Lu, Daniel Lacour, G. Lengaigne, S. Le Gall, S. Suire, et al.. Interfacial trapping for hot electron injection in silicon. Applied Physics Letters, 2013, 103 (2), ⟨10.1063/1.4813015⟩. ⟨hal-01276612⟩