The negative bias temperature instability vs. high-field stress paradigm

A new and more accurate fast-I_DV_G measurement methodology is utilized to examine the transient degradation and recovery associated with the negative-bias temperature instability (NBTI). The results reveal that the anomalously large initial degradations reported in the recent literature are actually due to high-field stress acceleration and are not representative of low-field NBTI phenomena. Our observations at these higher fields reveal the presence of an, as yet unaccounted for, electron trapping/de-trapping component. The electron trapping is a signature of high-field stress degradation. While this high-field stress acceleration is unavoidable, care must be taken to account for this component in NBTI analysis. Collectively, our observations indicate that this high-field stress component is present and unaccounted for in a large portion of the recent NBTI literature.