The performance of thin film metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diodes is investigated for a variety of large and small electron affinity insulators using ultrasmooth amorphous metal as the bottom electrode. Nb2O5, Ta2 O5, ZrO2, HfO2, Al2 O3, and SiO2 amorphous insulators are deposited via atomic layer deposition (ALD). Reflection electron energy loss spectroscopy (REELS) is utilized to measure the band-gap energy (EG) and energy position of intrinsic sub-gap defect states for each insulator. EG of as-deposited ALD insulators are found to be Nb2O5¼3.8 eV, Ta2O5¼4.4 eV, ZrO2¼5.4 eV, HfO2¼5.6 eV, Al2O3¼6.4 eV, and SiO2¼8.8 eV with uncertainty of 60.2 eV. Current vs. voltage asymmetry, non-linearity, turn-on voltage, and dominant conduction mechanisms are compared. Al2O3 and SiO2 are found to operate based on Fowler-Nordheim tunneling. Al2O3 shows the highest asymmetry. ZrO2, Nb2O5, and Ta2O5 based diodes are found to be dominated by Frenkel-Poole emission at large biases and exhibit lower asymmetry. The electrically estimated trap energy levels for defects that dominate Frenkel-Poole conduction are found to be consistent with the energy levels of surface oxygen vacancy defects observed in REELS measurements. For HfO2, conduction is found to be a mix of trap assisted tunneling and Frenkel-Poole emission. Insulator selection criteria in regards to MIM diodes applications are discussed.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the American Institute of Physics Publishing and can be found at: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap.Keywords: Conduction, Gate dielectric stacks, Transisto
