Voltage dependence of hard breakdown growth and the reliability implication in thin dielectrics
- 16 December 2002
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Electron Device Letters
- Vol. 23 (11) , 661-663
- https://doi.org/10.1109/led.2002.805010
Abstract
Hard breakdown (HBD) is shown to be a gradual process with the gate current increasing at a predictable rate exponentially dependent on the instantaneous stress voltage and oxide thickness. This is contrary to conventional wisdom that maintains that HBD is a fast thermally driven process. The HBD degradation rate (DR) for a 15 /spl Aring/ oxide scales from >1 mA/s at 4 V to <1 nA/s at 2 V, extrapolating to <10 fA/s at use voltage. Adding the HBD evolution time to the standard time-to-breakdown potentially reduces the projected fail rate of gate dielectrics by orders of magnitude.Keywords
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