Electron energy dissipation model of gate dielectric progressive breakdown in n- and p-channel field effect transistors

Abstract

We report the data and a model showing that the energy loss experienced by the carriers flowing through breakdown spots is the primary cause of progressive breakdown spot growth. The experiments are performed in gate dielectrics of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices subjected to accelerated high electric field constant voltage stress under inversion conditions. The model is analytical and contains few free parameters of clear physical meaning. This is compared to a large set of data on breakdown transients at various oxide thicknesses, stress voltages, and temperatures, both in cases of n-channel and p-channel transistors and polycrystalline Si/oxynitride/Si and metal gate/high k dielectric/Si gate stacks. The basic idea is that the breakdown transient is due to the growth of one or more filaments in the dielectric promoted by electromigration driven by the energy lost by the electrons traveling through the breakdown spots. Both cases of polycrystalline Si/oxynitride/Si and metal gate/high-k dielectric/Si MOS structures are investigated. The best fit values of the model to the data, reported and discussed in the paper, consistently describe a large set of data. The case of simultaneous growth of multiple progressive breakdown spots in the same device is also discussed in detail.

Study on the Connection Between the Set Transient in RRAMs and the Progressive Breakdown of Thin Oxides

“…It has been shown by Takagi et al [30] for the case of gate oxide BD in MOSFETs that electrons tunneling through defects responsible for stress induced leakage current (SILC) in thin oxynitrides do lose a large fraction of their energy in the oxide, which suggests an inelastic process. This behavior has been explained to be a consequence of defect relaxation [31] and was recently confirmed by Lombardo et al [32] for ultra-thin MOS devices. f 2 represents the fraction of energy qV lost by the carriers injected into the dielectric, which ranges from 0 to 1.…”

“…4 where D 0 is a pre-exponential term and E act is the diffusion activation energy. It is worth noting that as shown by Lombardo et al [32] substituting Eq. 4 and 3 into 1, an exponential dependence of TR on f 2 shows off.…”

“…While at a large applied voltage, f 2 tends to 1 in agreement with the electron's high energy loss, for low voltages f 2 decreases, tending to zero for V =0. f 2 also depends on the temperature, mainly because of phonon-electron scattering [32]. Therefore, f 2 is a function of voltage and temperature whose behavior is found by a best fit procedure.…”

Optimal Energy Resources Allocation Method of Wireless Sensor Networks for Intelligent Railway Systems

“…E f represents the energy consumption coefficient of free space power amplifier. When the distance between sending node and receiving node is greater than or equal to d 0 in the network, multi-channel attenuated energy dissipation model [18] is adopted, the energy consumption of sending data is proportional to the fourth power of distance. E m represents the energy consumption coefficient of multichannel attenuated power amplifier.…”

Estudio de la degradación y ruptura de estructuras MOS basadas en óxidos high-k multicapas

“…Dichos valores fueron obtenidos de los experimentos llevados a cabo con el setup basado en el amplificador TIA, ya que los transientes resultaron ser muy rápidos para la resolución temporal del SMU. Cada muestra se estresó en un único valor de tensión de 10.5 V. Aunque los resultados presentan una gran dispersión (como se espera, por resultados anteriores informados en la literatura (Palumbo, Lombardo, Eizenberg, 2014;Lombardo, Wu, Stathis, 2017)), no se observa una diferencia significativa en el valor medio encontrado entre las diferentes muestras. Los resultados experimentales obtenidos sugieren que el número de interfaces óxido-óxido presentes en las estructuras multicapas no tiene un impacto visible en la tasa de crecimiento de la corriente de ruptura para estas muestras.…”