Ultra-thin gate oxides-performance and reliability

Gate oxide thinning accompanied by the CMOS downsizing is expected to reach a direct-tunneling leakage current regime at the generations of 0.1 /spl mu/m and below. This has been regarded as one of the limiting factors of CMOS progress in terms of performance. Recently, the studies of the direct tunneling gate oxide have been carried out aggressively. In this paper, the results of these studies are reviewed and future prospects for the gate oxides are predicted.