Acceleration factors and mechanistic study of progressive breakdown in small area ultra-thin gate oxides

Failure mechanisms in HfO2 high-k gate stack MOSFETs

“…This phenomenon of the percolation path switching "on" and "off" has been consistently observed for many samples as long as I gl ≤ 2 µA, and could be due to charging and discharging of traps from the percolation path [114]. Similar variation in the gate leakage current in the initial phase of progressive BD, defined as digital breakdown, has been reported by Suehle et al [155] for SiO 2 /poly-Si gate stacks. On the other hand, once I g reaches a value of more than 2…”

Detailed study and projection of hard breakdown evolution in ultra-thin gate oxides

“…The left most distribution in Fig. 7 is composed of only non-stable breakdown filaments, and the right most distribution is composed of only stable breakdown filaments using the technique presented in [17]. The center distribution is a combination of both types of filaments.…”

“…Different stress conditions were used to induce the first breakdown such that residual time distributions of only stable filaments, non-stable filaments, and a combination on both types could be produced. A technique was demonstrated in [17] where the initial breakdown filament could be made stable during the second stress (to induce hard breakdown) by reversing the polarity of the stress used to induce the first breakdown. The left most distribution in Fig.…”

Evaluation of<tex>$hboxSiO_2$</tex>Antifuse in a 3D-OTP Memory

“…If soft breakdown happens during the read of the memory in the field, it will result in a marginal bit: a "1" sometimes shows as a "0." Recent studies of oxide breakdown characteristics by Suehle et al [24] show that both the hard breakdown and soft breakdown follow their own well-defined Weibull distributions, and have their own acceleration factors. However, the period between the first soft breakdown occurrence and the final hard breakdown is uncertain.…”