The negatively charged insulator-semiconductor structure: concepts, technological considerations and applications

The use of possibly uncharged and therefore passivated Insulator-Semiconductor structures (IS-structures) in conventional semiconductor devices as MISFETs is well known and has been an issue of many research papers. For drift field generation IS structures with a fixed positive interface charge in the insulator were developed in the 80 s and employed mainly as a part of field effect solar cells. While there has been a large number of publications about the positively biased IS structure there has been very little interest in its antipolar counterpart - the negatively biased IS structure - so far. In this paper we introduce theoretical considerations and qualitative models how such a structure would look and work like. Furthermore we consider technological aspects of producing a negatively biased IS structure. Possible applications are discussed as well.(C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.