Statistically independent soft breakdowns redefine oxide reliability specifications

Author

Alam, M.A. ; Smith, R.K. ; Weir, B.E. ; Silverman, P.J.

Author_Institution

Agere Syst., Murray Hill, NJ, USA

fYear

2002

fDate

8-11 Dec. 2002

Firstpage

151

Lastpage

154

Abstract

The statistics of soft-breakdown events in ultrathin oxide transistors are studied. By using new theoretical techniques and quantitative analysis, we demonstrate that spatial and temporal correlations among the successive breakdown events are weak. This allows us to redefine the standard specification of oxide reliability and suggest that ultrathin oxides will be far more reliable and fault-tolerant than has been assumed thus far.

Keywords

MOSFET; Weibull distribution; electric breakdown; fault tolerance; insulating thin films; integrated circuit reliability; semiconductor device reliability; statistical analysis; NMOS devices; PMOS devices; SiO/sub 2/; TDDB-limited lifetime; extrapolated Weibull curves; oxide reliability specifications; quantitative analysis; soft-breakdown event statistics; spatial correlations; statistically independent soft breakdowns; successive breakdown events; temporal correlations; ultrathin oxide fault tolerance; ultrathin oxide transistors; Circuits; Degradation; Electric breakdown; Electrodes; Fault tolerance; Lattices; Power generation; Statistical distributions; Statistics; Transistors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting, 2002. IEDM '02. International

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7462-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.2002.1175801

Filename

1175801