Microscopic oxide defects causing BTI, RTN, and SILC on high-k FinFETs

Reliability issues of MOSFETs such as bias temperature instability (BTI), random telegraph noise (RTN), and stress-induced leakage current (SILC), are linked to the trapping of charges in oxides. Even though the chemical structure of these oxide defects is still the subject of debate, detailed studies of these reliability phenomena have shown that their physical behavior can be successfully described by non-radiative multi-phonon (NMP) theory. In this work we characterize and study a pMOS high-k FinFET technology starting from degradation measurements up to the simulation of the energy barriers in the framework of NMP theory. This allows to investigate the aforementioned reliability issues all based on their common cause, the microscopic oxide defects.