Understand NBTI Mechanism by Developing Novel Measurement Techniques

Our recent investigations and understanding of the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) degradation in p-MOSFETs with ultrathin SiON gate dielectric are reviewed. The progressive understanding of NBTI mechanism is mainly related to the novel measurement techniques we developed. We show in this paper the following: 1) For the conventional charge pumping and direct-current current-voltage interface trap measurement, the interface trap density N_it is underestimated due to the recovery during measurement delay. The existing N_it data should be reexamined; 2) an ultrafast pulsed I-V method [fast pulsed measurement (FPM)] is developed to measure DeltaV_th with measurement time t_M = 100 ns. It can be considered as free from recovery during measurement; 3) due to the degradation during the initial threshold voltage measurement, the existing slow on-the-fly (OTF) DeltaV_th measurement distorts (overestimates) the slope and induces a kink at early stress time in the Log-Log curve of the time evolution of NBTI degradation. A fast OTF DeltaV_th measurement method is developed to overcome this problem; 4) a novel OTF interface trap (OFIT) measurement method is developed which is free from interface trap recovery during measurement. The OFIT measurement provides the most reliable data to inspect the interface trap R-D model; 5) combining the OFIT and FPM measurements, we decompose the NBTI DeltaV_th into two components: A slow DeltaV_th ^it component contributed by with a slow recovery time longer than 50mus and a fast DeltaV_th ^ox component contributed by DeltaV_ox with a broad spectrum of recovery time, including a component with very fast recovery time (100 ns); and 6) the dynamic degradation by DeltaV_th ^it component is frequency-independent and can be measured by a dc method, whereas the dynamic degradation DeltaV_{th ^ox by component measured by FPM is increased by increasing frequency. The ten-year lifetime of the p-MOSFETs is mainly determined by the degradation of the DeltaVth ^it component.}