The statistical distribution of percolation current for soft breakdown in ultrathin gate oxide

Author

Lin, W.H. ; Pey, K.L. ; Dong, Z. ; Chooi, S.Y.M. ; Ang, C.H. ; Zheng, J.Z.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Nat. Univ. of Singapore, Singapore

Volume

24

Issue

5

fYear

2003

fDate

5/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

336

Lastpage

338

Abstract

Soft breakdown in ultrathin gate oxide has been studied using constant voltage stressing. The behavior of current increments resulting from a number of soft breakdown events has been characterized by statistical distribution. It is shown that the distribution of the current increment follows Weibull distribution rather than log normal distribution. The newly established Weibull slope is shown to be independent of the stressed voltage in the range investigated between 4.5 and 5.1 V. The temperature effect study shows that the Weibull slope reduces with increasing testing temperature. Furthermore, a strong dependence of the Weibull slope on the oxide thickness has been found. These observations can be explained well by geometrical configurations of the percolation path.

Keywords

MOS capacitors; Weibull distribution; dielectric thin films; leakage currents; percolation; power MOSFET; semiconductor device breakdown; semiconductor device reliability; semiconductor-insulator boundaries; 4.5 to 5.1 V; Weibull distribution; constant voltage stressing; geometrical configurations; oxide thickness; percolation current; percolation path; soft breakdown; statistical distribution; ultrathin gate oxide; Breakdown voltage; Current measurement; Electric breakdown; Log-normal distribution; MOS capacitors; Oxidation; Semiconductor device manufacture; Statistical distributions; Temperature; Weibull distribution;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2003.812553

Filename

1210845