A physical mechanism of current-induced resistance decrease in heavily doped polysilicon resistors

Abstract

A physical model describing the basic mechanism of the current-induced resistance decrease in heavily doped polysilicon resistors' experimental aspects reported in the previous paper [1], is proposed. The resistance decrease is explained in terms of the local melting of boundary layers between crystal grains in the polysilicon caused by the current feeding and a segregation of impurity atoms in the subsequent solidification process. This model explains all the experimental results concerning the resistance decrease phenomena. The theoretical expression for the current dependence of resistance decrease derived from the model agrees well with the experimental characteristics.