The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering a North Carolina State University will purchase a low temperature probe station, capable of reaching temperatures as low as 70 K (Degrees Kelvin), and low current switching matrix cards which will be dedicated to support research in engineering. The equipment will be used in research projects whose goals are to gain a fundamental understanding of the nature of electrically active bulk oxide traps in the gate oxides of insulated gate field transistors (IGFETs). In particular, this equipment will provide a means of determining if the charge free regions observed at the SiO2 interfaces of such IGFETs are defect free regions or contain defects that can trap electron (or holes) but do not retain these trapped carriers due to tunneling from these sites to the interface or thermally assisted detrapping. In addition, this equipment will allow for more accurate measurement of the density and cross section of neutral electron and neutral hole traps by providing temperatures low enough to eliminate the detrapping which occurs with both of these types of traps. It will also be possible to characterize the detrapping associated with the traps using this equipment.
