Measurement and characterization of hot carrier safe operating area (HCI-SOA) in 24V n-type lateral DMOS transistors

Due to strong demand on smart-power technologies, LDMOS device has been widely used because of its compatibility with standard CMOS process. For most fabrication companies, this is an attractive reason to extend the existing technology applications. However, the device is vulnerable to hot carrier (HCI) damage. SOA in HCI is one of the major criteria to address the concern in LDMOS device design. There are a lot of reliability studies focusing on the HCI failure mechanism but not many literatures available on SOA characterization. This paper will focus on the HCI-SOA test methodology and characterization for n-type LDMOS device by adopting the conventional CMOS HCI test method. This will be a useful guideline for the industry on the device characterization process.