Gate oxide multiple soft breakdown (Multi-SBD) impact on CMOS inverter

The impact of gate oxide multiple soft breakdown (Multi-SBD) on the performance of CMOS inverter has been demonstrated. The results indicate that the CMOS inverter is still functioning when Multi-SBD event occurs, but noise margin degraded rapidly after extending a period of time. Moreover, off-state leakage current increasing and gate induced drain leakage (GIDL) phenomenon are other concerns. Multi-SBD may be acceptable in reliability viewpoint and the results also imply that we can relax the failure criteria of gate oxide reliability to allow a higher operation voltage, but it must depend on circuit design and application rather for all cases.