A new insight into the dynamic fluctuation mechanism of stress-induced leakage current

The dynamic fluctuation of stress-induced leakage current, called V-SILC, which is one of the causes of erratic bits in flash memory, was investigated. The effect of V-SILC on flash memory retention increases with the scaling down of device dimensions because the amplitude of V-SILC is constant and does not depend on the gate area. A statistical analysis of V-SILC indicated that V-SILC is random telegraph noise (RTN) of gate SILC and is associated with the state transition of a single defect in a gate oxide. The state transition of the defect is caused by an electron collision with the defect.