Nanoprobing EBAC technique to reveal the failure root cause of gate oxide reliability issues of an IC process

Reliability tests, such as High-Temperature Operating Life (HTOL), Hot Carrier Injection (HCI), Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown (TDDB), etc., is required for the lifetime prediction of an integrated circuit (IC) product. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analysis is required to provide insights to the defect mechanisms, induced in the scaled gate oxide, by the above reliability tests. In this paper, application of high resolution Nano-probing Electron Beam Absorbance Current (EBAC) to isolate the defective locations for TEM analysis was investigated. We have successfully demonstrated that TEM analysis after Nano-probing EBAC fault isolation is an effective technique to reveal the failure root cause of gate oxide breakdown after reliability stresses.