Gate capacitance of metal-oxide-semiconductor devices with ultra-thin high-K gate-dielectric materials is calculated taking into account the penetration of wave functions into the gate-dielectric. When penetration effects are neglected, the gate capacitance is independent of the dielectric material for a given equivalent oxide thickness (EOT). Our self-consistent numerical results show that in the presence of wave function penetration, even for the same EOT, gate capacitance depends on the gate-dielectric material. Calculated gate capacitance is higher for materials with lower conduction band offsets with silicon. We have investigated the effects of substrate doping density on the relative error in gate capacitance due to neglecting wave function penetration. It is found that the error decreases with increasing doping density. We also show that accurate calculation of the gate capacitance including wave function penetration is not critically dependent on the value of the electron effective mass in the gate-dielectric region. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.