In this paper we review the subject of oxide breakdown (BD), focusing our attention on the case of the gate dielectrics of interest for current Si microelectronics, i.e., Si oxides or oxynitrides of thickness ranging from some tens of nanometers down to about 1nm. The first part of the paper is devoted to a concise description of the subject concerning the kinetics of oxide degradation under high-voltage stress and the statistics of the time to BD. It is shown that, according to the present understanding, the BD event is due to a buildup in the oxide bulk of defects produced by the stress at high voltage. Defect concentration increases up to a critical value corresponding to the onset of one percolation path joining the gate and substrate across the oxide. This triggers the BD, which is therefore believed to be an intrinsic effect, not due to preexisting, extrinsic defects or processing errors. We next focus our attention on experimental studies concerning the kinetics of the final event of BD, during which the gate leakage increases above acceptable levels. In conditions of intrinsic BD, the leakage increase is due to the growth of damage within the oxide in localized regions. Observations concerning this damage are reviewed and discussed. The measurement of the current, voltage, and power dissipated during the BD transient are also reported and discussed in comparison with the data of structural damage. We then describe the current understanding concerning the dependence of the BD current transient on the conditions of electric field and voltage. In particular, as the oxide thickness and, as a consequence, the voltage levels used for accelerated reliability tests have decreased, the BD transient exhibits a marked change in behavior. As the stress voltage is decreased below a threshold value, the BD transient becomes slower. This recently discovered phenomenon has been termed progressive BD, i.e., a gradual growth of the BD spot and of the gate leakage, with a time scale that under operation conditions can be a large fraction of the total time to BD. We review the literature on this phenomenon, describing the current understanding concerning the dependence of the effect on voltage, temperature, oxide thickness, sample geometry, and its physical structure. We also discuss the possible relation to the so-called soft oxide BD mode and propose a simpler, more consistent terminology to describe different BD regimes. The last part of the paper is dedicated to exploratory studies, still at the early stages given the very recent subject, concerning the impact on the BD of materials for the metal-oxide-semiconductor gate stack and, in particular, metal gates.

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Dielectric breakdown is the process of local materials transiting from insulating to conductive when the dielectric is submerged in a high external electric field environment. We show that the atomistic changes of the chemical bonding in a nanoscale breakdown path are extensive and irreversible. Oxygen atoms in dielectric SiO2 are washed out with substoichiometric silicon oxide (SiOx with x<2) formation, and local energy gap lowering with intermediate bonding state of silicon atoms (Si1+, Si2+, and Si3+) in the percolation leakage path. Oxygen deficiency within the breakdown path is estimated to be as high as 50%–60%.