Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) irradiation may induce damages on high-dielectric-constant (high-k) dielectrics. In this letter, the EUV-irradiation-induced damages on HfSiO, HfAlO, and Al 2 O 3 are investigated. After EUV irradiation, hole traps, border traps, and interface traps are all increased. All of the three high-k dielectrics exhibit poorer immunity to the EUV irradiation than SiO 2 . The oxide traps scale down with the dielectric thickness. Interfacial layer plays an important role in the increase of border traps and interface traps. Therefore, high-quality SiO-like interfacial layer is critical for radiation-hard devices.

The effects of extreme-ultraviolet (EUV)-irradiationinduced damage on the characteristics of a silicon-oxide-nitrideoxide-silicon (SONOS) memory device are investigated. After EUV irradiation, changes in the memory window and program/ erase speed indicate the generation of positive charges and new traps. Retention performance degrades after high-dose irradiation, which indicates that the tunneling layer is damaged. Endurance performance degrades severely because the damage in the blocking oxide results in serious electron back injection after cycling operations. These defects cannot be recovered after 600 • C annealing. It is recommended that in-process high-dose EUV irradiation on a SONOS stack after a front-end-of-line process should be avoided.Index Terms-Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), nonvolatile memory (NVM), radiation damage, silicon-oxide-nitrideoxide-silicon (SONOS) memory.

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