Electrical breakdown as an insulator-to-metal transition

Abstract

The effect of dielectric strengthening under electrical breakdown in thin oxide films and other materials is discussed. The breakdown phenomenon is considered as an insulator-to-metal phase transition. The effect of strengthening is thus associated with the fact that no phase transition seems to be possible when the system size is decreased below a certain characteristic length d _c (it is a so-called ‘tachyon instability’). This dimension is estimated to be d _c ∼ ξ, where ξ is the correlation length for metal–insulator transition.

Keywords:

• dielectric breakdown
• metal–insulator transition
• oxide films
• tachyon instability

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Russian Federation through contracts nos 02.740.11.0395 and 02.740.11.5179, ‘Development of Scientific Potential of High School’ Program (projects nos 4978 and 8051) and ‘Scientific and Educational Community of Innovation Russia’ Program (projects nos P1156 and P1220). The author also thanks G.B. Stefanovich and L.L. Odynets for stimulating discussions, and V.P. Novikova and M.V. Savitskaja for their help in the manuscript preparation.