Percolation resistance evolution during progressive breakdown in narrow MOSFETs

Author

Lo, V.L. ; Pey, K.L. ; Tung, C.H. ; Ang, D.S. ; Foo, T.S. ; Tang, L.J.

Author_Institution

Microelectron. Center, Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore

Volume

27

Issue

5

fYear

2006

fDate

5/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

396

Lastpage

398

Abstract

A method has been developed to determine the effective resistance of a conductive breakdown (BD) path formed in ultrathin gate dielectric. Based on this method, the evolution of the percolation resistance (R_perc) during progressive BD (PBD) is studied in details. It is found that R_perc rapidly degrades in the initial stage of PBD with the rate of 0.1-0.2 dec/s. As PBD continues to evolve, the R_perc degradation drastically slows down, and the parasitic resistance becomes increasingly significant. In the later stage of PBD, R_perc degrades with a very slow rate, leading to the saturation of R_perc. Additionally, the temperature and the voltage dependence of R_perc suggest that the mechanism responsible in governing the PBD growth under normal operations could be different from that during accelerated stressing.

Keywords

MOSFET; dielectric materials; semiconductor device breakdown; semiconductor device reliability; MOSFET; conductive breakdown path; dielectric breakdown; percolation resistance; progressive breakdown; ultrathin gate dielectric; Degradation; Dielectric breakdown; Dielectric measurements; Electric breakdown; Electrical resistance measurement; Leakage current; MOSFETs; Microelectronics; Stress; Voltage; Dielectric breakdown; MOSFET; percolation model; percolation resistance; progressive breakdown;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2006.873422

Filename

1626468