A systematic leakage current analysis of gate oxide soft breakdown

Soft breakdown is a breakdown mechanism observed for gate oxide layer thickness of 7 nm and less. The physical origin of this new reliability issue is still under debate. The results presented here show that most of the preand post-breakdown leakage current phenomena can be observed on the same sample. This indicates that the breakdown of a thin gate oxide is a complex process. The leakage current bursts observed before the (soft) breakdown event might be used as pre-breakdown trigger signal possibly allowing the study of the weak spot before its destruction by the breakdown event.