A Precision On-Chip Measurement Technique for Dielectric Absorption of an Integrated Capacitor

This paper presents a precision dielectric absorption measurement method to characterize integrated capacitors. Conventional methods using an oscilloscope have measurement error due to the resolution limitation of the oscilloscope and the off-leakage current of the control switches. We improve the measurement accuracy by employing a switch without off-leakage current and a readout amplifier to minimize the influence of installation noise and environmental noise. Test chips were fabricated using a 0.18-mu m CMOS process technology. The test chip consists of a metal-insulator-metal capacitor and measurement circuits. The measured standard deviations of the recovery level and short-term repeatability are 43.2 and 31.0 ppm, respectively. These results show that the proposed method is very accurate and stable compared with the conventional one.This work was supported by the Brain Korea 21 Program for Leading Universities and Students funded by the Ministry of Education, Korea. The Associate Editor coordinating the review process was Dr. Niclas Bjorsell