Microscopic degradation models for advanced technology

New failure mechanisms can be expected to emerge with introduction of new materials and device structures. Reliability assessment is further complicated by increasing device-to-device variability associated with continuous scaling that demands ever increasing sample sizes for statistical evaluations. To mitigate this trend, the traditional statistical reliability analysis can be complemented by the microscopic degradation models, which are based on the atomic-level material properties and explicitly consider defect generation caused by the carrier-dielectric interaction.