Temperature and electric field characteristics of time-dependent dielectric breakdown for silicon dioxide and reoxidized-nitrided oxides

Author

Lin, Chi-hung ; Cable, James ; Woo, Jason C S

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., California Univ., Los Angeles, CA, USA

Volume

42

Issue

7

fYear

1995

fDate

7/1/1995 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1329

Lastpage

1332

Abstract

TDDB characteristics of 150 Å reoxidized nitrided oxide (ONO) gate dielectrics were examined at temperatures from 77 K to 400 K. These ONO films were processed with different conditions of rapid thermal nitridation (RTN) and rapid thermal re-oxidation (RTO). Optimized ONO films show better Q_bd performance while maintaining a similar temperature and electric field dependence compared to SiO₂. The low temperature activation energy for ONO and SiO₂ is found to be strongly temperature dependent, and the charge to breakdown, Q_bd, is closely related to the electron trap generation/trapping rate rather than the amount of hole trapping for high field stress. To further verify the effect of hole trapping on TDDB, X-ray irradiation was applied to wafers at different process steps. The results clearly show that the amount of hole trapping does not correlate with the charge to breakdown

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; MIS devices; X-ray effects; dielectric thin films; electric breakdown; electron traps; hole traps; nitridation; oxidation; rapid thermal processing; silicon compounds; 150 A; 77 to 400 K; CMOS gate dielectrics; ONO films; ONO gate dielectric; RTN; RTO; Si-SiO₂; SiO₂-Si₃N₄-SiO₂; X-ray irradiation; charge to breakdown; electric field characteristics; electron trap generation; hole trapping; low temperature activation energy; rapid thermal nitridation; rapid thermal re-oxidation; reoxidized-nitrided oxides; temperature characteristics; time-dependent dielectric breakdown; trapping rate; Design for quality; Dielectric breakdown; Electric breakdown; Electron traps; Furnaces; Nitrogen; Rapid thermal processing; Silicon; Stress; Temperature dependence;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/16.391216

Filename

391216