Role of defect relaxation for trap-assisted tunneling in high-K thin films

We assess the impact of structural relaxation of defects upon charging on trap-assisted tunneling in high- dielectric materials. ZrO 2/Al 2O 3/ZrO2 thin films are taken as an exemplary system. In our completely different approach, a first-principles defect model is derived from Hedins GW approximation calculations, which is then coupled to kinetic Monte Carlo charge transport simulations. Comparison between simulation and experiment demonstrates that it is often imperative to take structural relaxation processes into account when modeling nanoscale transport across defect states.