Defect Creation Stimulated by Thermally Activated Hole Trapping as the Driving Force Behind Negative Bias Temperature Instability in SiO2, SiON, and High-k Gate Stacks

Recent publications on negative bias temperature instability have clearly demonstrated the existence of two components contributing to the phenomenon, with one of them recovering over many timescales and the other being more or less permanent. Interestingly, these two components seem to be coupled since their effect cannot be separated by the application of different stress voltages and stress temperatures. Based on this scalability we suggest a new model which can explain the experimental data during both stress and recovery for our pure SiO₂, oxynitride, and high-k devices under a wide range of experimental conditions.