Can macroscopic oxide thickness uniformity improve oxide reliability?

Author

Wu, Ernest Y. ; Nowak, Edward J. ; Vollertsen, R.-P.

Author_Institution

IBM Corp., Essex Junction, VT, USA

Volume

21

Issue

8

fYear

2000

Firstpage

402

Lastpage

404

Abstract

In this work, we investigated both experimentally and numerically the impact of macroscopic oxide thickness uniformity on Weibull breakdown characteristics for both Weibull parameters, namely, the characteristics times (T/sub 63/) and Weibull slopes (/spl beta/) over a wide range of oxide thickness. A detailed full-scale Monte Carlo analysis is used to examine the breakdown characteristics at low-percentile and its sensitivity to variation of thickness dependence of time-to-breakdown and Weibull slopes. We show that for thinner oxides with very shallow Weibull slopes the impact of thickness variation is drastically reduced as compared to thicker oxides for the same parameters.

Keywords

MIS structures; Monte Carlo methods; Weibull distribution; dielectric thin films; semiconductor device breakdown; semiconductor device reliability; Weibull breakdown characteristics; Weibull parameters; Weibull slopes; full-scale Monte Carlo analysis; gate dielectric; macroscopic oxide thickness uniformity; oxide reliability; thickness dependence; thickness variation; time-to-breakdown; Breakdown voltage; Capacitors; Degradation; Dielectric breakdown; Electric breakdown; Manufacturing; Microelectronics; Microscopy; Monte Carlo methods; Thickness control;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/55.852964

Filename

852964