Investigation of Gate Etch Damage at Metal/High-$k$ Gate Dielectric Stack Through Random Telegraph Noise in Gate Edge Direct Tunneling Current

Abstract

Plasma damage on a high-k/SiO 2 dielectric at a gate edge during a dry etch process is investigated. The damage was observed to generate slow oxide traps, causing a random telegraph noise (RTN) in a gate edge direct tunneling current. Through the analysis of the RTN, the distribution of the oxide traps in the high-k/SiO 2 dielectric was obtained, and the plasma-damageinduced oxide traps were found to be distributed over a wide area of the high-k/SiO 2 sidewall at the gate edge region.Index Terms-Gate edge direct tunneling (EDT) current, oxide trap, plasma damage, random telegraph noise (RTN).

Characterization of Random Telegraph Noise Generated by Process- and Cycling-Stress-Induced Traps in 26 nm NAND Flash Memory

“…We understand that the traps are roughly located around both edges of the channel, which seems to come from the gate etch process. 20) In order to extract the trap position along the channel width direction (z T ), we also use a method in the literature. 19) In Fig.…”

Extraction of Location and Energy Level of the Trap Causing Random Telegraph Noise at Reverse-Biased Region in GaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

“…The RTN analysis has been mainly applied to devices based on the MOS structure and used to extract the location and the energy level of the trap in gate oxide [6]- [8]. Through several applications using RTN experimental results, we have made progresses in solving reliability problems in the MOS structure.…”

Defect properties of high-k/metal-gate metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors determined by characterization of random telegraph noise

“…14) As a result, RTN is adopted to monitor the trapping of electrons as well as to examine the defect physics of high-k dielectrics. 2,4,[15][16][17][18][19][20] For the accurate analysis of the RTN phenomenon, trap energy level (E T ) variation and relevant factors need to be examined. Moreover, it is necessary to determine how they affect each other.…”