New technique for measuring the threshold voltage in MOS devices

The present paper describes an experimental method that can be used to measure the threshold voltage in MOS devices in the form of transistors or capacitors. The proposed method is based on the detection of the non-steady-state/steady-state transition of the surface potential at the oxide-semiconductor interface of a MOS device, when it is swept from depletion to inversion regions. This detection is carried out as follows: a set of current versus gate signal frequency measurements, for different voltage amplitudes, is performed. The frequency values corresponding to the maximum measured current (optimum frequency) f(m), are read. Several gate voltage versus optimum frequencies (f(m)-V-G) curves are plotted for gate voltage values ranging from 0.2 to 3 V with a 0.1 V step increment. The (f(m)-V-G) curves are found to undergo an abrupt change of slope at a specific gate voltage value. The value of threshold voltage is extracted from the critical points of the former curves. Experiments have been carried out on different devices. The measured values of threshold voltage are found to be in good agreement to those obtained by the conventional I-D-V-GS and simulation methods as well as that supplied by the device manufacturer. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.