Coulomb glass origin of defect-induced dielectric loss in thin-film oxides

The dielectric loss in amorphous, thin-film oxide insulators produces a real part of the ac conductivity σ′(ω) that scales as ωs with s∼1. Conventional models explain this frequency dependence by hopping or tunneling of charge between neighboring defect sites. These models fail at low temperatures since they predict that σ′ should vanish at T=0. We observe that the ac conductivity of Ta2O5, ZnO, and SiO2 has a nonzero extrapolated value at T=0. We propose that this behavior is consistent with the predictions of a Coulomb glass, an insulator with a random distribution of charged defects.