Effects of thermal annealing on the electrical breakdown of thin fatty acid films

Abstract

Defects are inherently common in most thin film devices. Defects in thin film insulators adversely affect (in many cases) the dielectric properties of the insulator. The well known and documented phenomena of "self-healing" for the removal of defects from most thin film metal-insulator-metal (MIM) and metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) devices involves the isolation of defects from the remainder of the device. This is accomplished by subjecting the device to a constant electric potential for several minutes (known as electrical annealing). The device breaks down at the weak spots (defects) resulting in a filamentary current between the two electrodes which vaporize the electrodes and the insulator, thus isolating the defect from the remainder of the device. However, when thin film MIM devices using stearic acid (CH3(CH^)leCOOH) as the insulator were self healed there was no indication of any vaporization taking place.