Temperature dependence and conduction mechanism after analog soft breakdown

The current conduction after analog soft breakdown (A-SBD) is studied as a function of temperature for NMOS and PMOS transistors. Unlike direct tunneling, a strong temperature dependence is observed for gate and substrate current after A-SBD. Recently it has been shown that, if one can accept a single SBD event, the circuit lifetime can be increased by a factor of 100 for sub-2 nm oxides. This implies that all first breakdown events must be soft and the criterion for device failure is limited by other factors, like power dissipation due to enhanced gate current. In order to simulate the effect of the increased gate current on the circuit performance, it is important to understand and model its voltage and temperature dependence. In this work, we show that the electron co-tunneling model successfully explains both the voltage and temperature dependence of gate current after A-SBD. This model predicts a weak oxide thickness dependence and a unique correlation between the coefficients of the power law model.