On the progressive breakdown statistical distribution and its voltage acceleration

The statistical distribution of progressive breakdown (PBD) time is found to be lognormal at high values of failure currents in large sample size experiments. A physics-based model captures the main experimental trends. While we confirm that the voltage scaling of PBD time is nicely modelled by a power law, the value of the power-law exponent is reported to depend on the failure current and to take values somewhat smaller than those previously reported for the first breakdown voltage acceleration.