Enhanced SiO/sub 2/ reliability on deuterium-implanted silicon

Stress-induced leakage current and time-dependent dielectric breakdown were investigated to examine the reliability of gate oxides grown on hydrogen- and deuterium-implanted silicon substrates. An order of magnitude improvement in charge-to-breakdown was observed for the deuterium-implanted devices as compared with the hydrogen-implanted ones. Such reliability improvement may be explained by the reduction of defects in the SiO₂ and Si/SiO₂ interface, such as Si dangling bonds, weak Si-Si bonds, and strained Si-O bonds due to the retention of implanted deuterium at the interface and in the bulk oxide as confirmed by secondary ion mass spectroscopy