It consists of a conducting strip separated from a ground plane by a dielectric layer known as the substrate.
The double-layer is like the dielectric layer in a conventional capacitor, but with the thickness of a single molecule.
Back end of line manufacturing, e.g. interconnect and dielectric layers are not considered.
The thicknesses of the air and dielectric layers are 0.8 and 0.2 of the period, respectively.
But dielectric layers are approaching the nanometer size, at which point they lose their ability to store charge.
Nowadays (2010), the minimum thickness of the dielectric layer is about 0.5 microns.
It is equal to the total accumulated charge passing through the dielectric layer just before failure.
Deposition of the dielectric layer (Fig. 4, step 3)
With chemical sources, the reactions associated with the growth rate are faster on the semiconductor surface than on the dielectric layer.
A simple parallel plate capacitor has two conductors separated by a dielectric layer.