The transient behavior of NBTI - a new prospective

The negative-bias-temperature-instability (NBTI) is currently one of the most serious reliability issues in advanced CMOS technology. Specifically, the fast recovery of NBTI degradation immediately after stress is removed has recently become a hot topic. The major NBTI debates center on the responsible mechanism, the proper measurement method, and the possible impact on reliability. We show that the observed fast transient degradation is a consequence of high-field stressing and has nothing to do with ¿traditional¿ NBTI. We further show that most current NBTI experiments fail to capture an additional transient component that can potentially impact reliability more severely.