Soft breakdown and hard breakdown in ultra-thin oxides

Soft breakdown of an insulating nanowire in an electric field

“…The geometric structure of the wire is still maintained in the breakdown state, and the process is reversible. In this sense, the breakdown for this SiO 2 nanowire can be classified as soft breakdown [22]. From Mulliken population analysis, it is found that the charges are redistributed in the field.…”

Conduction instability of amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistors under constant drain current stress

“…The drain voltage (V DS ) was then measured by applying a constant stress current to the drain electrode (I DS_inj ) with source grounded in the range of I off (<10 À10 A) level which was estimated from the transfer characteristics with V DS variation up to the saturation regime (V DS > V GS -V TH ). compliance voltage of V DS was set to $80 V to avoid I DS_inj induced hard breakdown (HBD) [11]. The electrical characteristics were measured at room temperature using Keithley 236 source measurement units (SMUs).…”

Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability

“…The generated defects lead to intrinsic breakdowns and the built-in defects lead to extrinsic breakdowns. The traps generated by the high-voltage stress lead to an increase in the oxide noise, with this noise being statistically modeled [143,150,169,171,[760][761][762][763][764][765][766][767][768]. Trap-generated noise, with properties similar to trap-generated noise in oxides, has been found in silicon p-n junctions [769].…”