Physical damage effect of microelectrodes under nanosecond pulse induced breakdown

Electrical breakdown due to overvoltage may result in a series of performance degradation and physical damage to microelectronic devices. In this paper, we present the physical damage effect of nanogaps in microelectronic devices and explore the relationship between the morphology change and injected energy during breakdown process. The nanoscale discharge characteristics experimental system based on a focused ion beam, a nanometer manipulator and a DC power supply generator was established, which could be used to simulate the typical nanosecond pulse impact event while electrostatic charge accumulates between the nanogaps. Different types of voltage stresses were applied to tungsten microelectrodes so as to understand the relationship between physical morphology change and injected energy. The morphology change process was obtained and the mechanism for the multi-physical coupling induced physical damage was then put forward.