Post-Breakdown Characteristics of Extrinsic Failure Modes for Ultra-Thin Gate Oxides

In this work, we show that the post-breakdown behavior of the extrinsic breakdown (BD) mode in ultra-thin gate oxides exhibits the same characteristics as the intrinsic breakdown mode. Although the first BD statistical time to breakdown distributions of intrinsic and extrinsic populations are inherently different, our results indicate that the progressive BD distribution, its voltage acceleration, and temperature activation are roughly identical for both extrinsic and intrinsic samples. These results reveal that the post-BD wear out mechanisms that precede the circuit failure are the same for the BD paths initiated by either intrinsic or extrinsic BD events