Cyclic current-voltage characterization applied to edge damage evaluation in gate definition plasma etching

Analysis of Current Components Observed by Cyclic Current–Voltage Measurement in Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Capacitors

“…1(b), we investigated the effect of hold time [4][5][6] and/or a brief lightillumination, 7,8) and the results are shown in Fig. 2.…”

“…[1][2][3] Recently, the cyclic I-V technique was developed to characterize border traps. [4][5][6][7][8] In such experiment, data is typically collected as the I-V curves, [4][5][6][7] and the density of border traps (D bt ) is calculated using…”

Plasma processing damage in etching and deposition

“…The capacitors had the saine area (10^ /mm-) and oxide thickness {70 A). The technique of [10] is used to elucidate generation cuixent.…”

“…For example, Figure 1 shows the current-voltage characteristics observed for capacitors on p-type silicon substrates having the same gate oxide area, but with the edges defined on the field oxide (field devices) or the gate oxide (gate devices). The voltage used was a step-ramp and the current shown was that measured at a fixed .sampling time after each step [10]. It can be seen that the transient gate current at positive voltages (depletion) was larger in the gate devices; this is due to higher generation currents due to the "edge-type" damage.…”

“…The indicated degradation may have resulted from currentinduced damage during processing results from the direct exposure of the gate oxide at the device edges during the polysilicon-gate-etching step, in contrast to field devices, in which only the current damage is possible[10].…”