A comparative study of the on-off switching behavior of metal-insulator-metal antifuses

Author

Li, W.T. ; McKenzie, D.R. ; Wiszniewski, W.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Appl. Phys., Sydney Univ., NSW, Australia

Volume

21

Issue

6

fYear

2000

fDate

6/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

295

Lastpage

297

Abstract

The on-state reliability of metal-insulator-metal antifuses based on aluminum nitride, silicon nitride, amorphous silicon, and tetrahedral amorphous carbon were investigated and compared. Among them, only the tetrahedral amorphous carbon antifuses show no spontaneous switching from the on-state to the off-state during operation. The unwanted switching was found to be associated with the presence of pinholes in the upper metal electrode of the antifuse. The percentages of silicon nitride and amorphous silicon antifuses with on-off switching were found to he greatly reduced after thermal annealing of the insulators. A failure mechanism of an antifuse resulting from thermal oxidation of its conductive link is proposed.

Keywords

MIM devices; annealing; electric fuses; field programmable gate arrays; oxidation; semiconductor device breakdown; semiconductor device reliability; switching; FPGA; Ti-AlN-Al; Ti-C-Al; Ti-Si-Al; Ti-SiN-Al; amorphous Si; breakdown; conductive link; failure mechanism; metal-insulator-metal antifuses; on-off switching behavior; on-state reliability; pinholes; spontaneous switching; tetrahedral amorphous C antifuses; thermal annealing; thermal oxidation; upper metal electrode; voltage programmable link; Aluminum nitride; Amorphous materials; Amorphous silicon; Annealing; Electrodes; Failure analysis; Insulation; Metal-insulator structures; Oxidation; Thermal conductivity;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/55.843155

Filename

843155