Forming process with current compliance (soft break-down) is necessary to activate the resistive switching behavior for most of the resistance random access memory (ReRAM). Due to the rich oxygen ions among SiO₂ film, the amount of mobile oxygen ions induced from forming process would exceed the reserving ability of TiN oxygen reservoir as the thickness of SiO₂ films are too thick. The exceeding mobile oxygen ions will recombine with the oxygen vacancies in the SiO₂ film near the TiN/SiO₂ interface and result in forming fail. Through executing high temperature forming process (HTF), it improves the forming process by enhancing the amount of mobile oxygen ions being drove into TiN electrode. Furthermore, the increased mobile oxygen ions can extra repair the conductive filament and reach lower off-current during the reset process that has undergone HTF for activation.

This work studies the influence of gate induced-floating body effect (GIFBE) on negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) in strained partial depleted silicon-on-insulator p-type metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (PD SOI p-MOSFETs). The experimental results indicate GIFBE causes a reduction in the electrical oxide field, leading to a better NBTI reliability under FB operation. The electron accumulation in the FB can be partially attributed to the electrons tunneling from the process-induced partial n+ poly gate. However, based on different operation conditions, we found the dominant origin of electrons was strongly dependent on holes in the inversion layer under source/drain grounding. This suggests that the mechanism of GIFBE at higher voltages is dominated by our proposed anode electron injection (AEI) model. Moreover, based on this new model, the mechanical compressive strained operation was further introduced to the SOI p-MOSFET. It was found that the strained device under FB operation exhibits a much less NBTI degradation. This behavior can be attributed to the fact that more electrons accumulation induced by strain effect reduces the electric oxide field during NBTI stress.

Due to their wide band gap, transparent conductive oxides ( TCOs) exhibit a high transparency in the solar spectral range. Therefore, they are used as transparent electrodes in many applications, e.g. in flat panel displays, architectural and automotive glazing, solar thermal applications and thin film solar cells, either (amorphous/micro-crystalline and poly-crystalline) silicon- or non-silicon based (e.g. CIGS).

In this contribution, the investigation on low pressure plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD) of poly-crystalline (Al-doped) zinc oxide layers serving as TCOs in thin film solar cells, is addressed. An argon- fed expanding thermal plasma where the deposition precursors (diethylzinc, trimethylaluminum and oxygen) are fed in the downstream region is used for the deposition of Al- doped ZnO. The presented studies will highlight the impact of specific plasma and process parameters on the ZnO:Al nucleation phase, grain development (in terms of crystallographic orientation and size) and morphological and electrical properties, coupled to specific demands in thin film solar cell technology, i.e. in terms of band gap, conductivity and morphology/texturing.

In particular, selected insights will be presented in research areas, where a multi-diagnostic approach is adopted in order to investigate:

- The control on the gradient in resistivity of the ZnO:Al layer as function of its thickness, as supported by the correlation between texturing, grain size development and carrier mobility;

- The impact of the surface energy of a thin intrinsic ZnO layer on the development of the morphological and electrical properties of the ZnO:Al layer;

- The influence of the annealing procedure (i.e. solid phase crystallization) on ZnO:Al/amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) stacks on the TCO conductivity and on the crystallization kinetics towards poly-crystalline silicon formation, for thin film poly-Si solar cells.