Anomalous behaviour of surface leakage currents in heavily-doped MOS structures

The anomalous gate voltage- and dopant dependence of surface leakage currents in heavily-doped MOS gated-diode structures is described. It is shown that, by using a recombination model which includes tunnelling effects, a good quantitative description of surface leakage currents can be obtained. This resulted in a revision of the classical description of these currents. Simple design criteria to avoid excessive surface leakage currents are presented.<>