SILC-based reassignment of trapping and trap generation regimes of positive bias temperature instability

We report a simple but effective SILC-based methodology to separate and identify trapping and trap generation dominated regimes of positive bias temperature instability (PBTI). We use theoretical model and experiments to demonstrate that the sign for stress induced leakage current (SILC) reverses as PBTI transitions from trapping to trap generation dominated regimes; this is in contrast to threshold voltage shift with no corresponding sign reversal. SILC crossover methodology further verifies that initial and fast saturated trapping is temperature independent while trap generation is voltage and temperature activated. The SILC-based reassignment not only indentifies trapping and trap generation regimes of PBTI, but also suggests a remarkable universality of trap generation in wide variety of High-k samples.