The correlation of highly accelerated Q/sub bd/ tests to TDDB life tests for ultra-thin gate oxides

Chen, Y.; Suehle, John S.; Shen, Chih-Chieh; Bernstein, J.B.; Messick, C.; Chaparala, P.

doi:10.1109/relphy.1998.670449

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Interface trap generation has been seen to be proportional to the exp (v) [490] and, particularly in thinner oxides where the electron energy at the anode is proportional to the gate voltage, time-to-breakdown has been found to be proportional to the exp (V) [522,541,547,635,[846][847][848][849][850][851][852]. Most of the long-time, low-voltage studies of breakdown have shown that the time-to-breakdown is very well fit by an exp (E) relationship, especially at lower voltages [24,102,145,264,265,626,656,660,711,753,820,[853][854][855][856][857][858][859][860][861][862][863][864][865]. It has often been observed that the field acceleration factor in thicker oxides is about 10 MV/cm/decade-in-time [24,626,656,660,753,855].…”

Section: Reliabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability

Dumin

2001

Int. J. Hi. Spe. Ele. Syst.

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The subject of oxide wearout, breakdown, and reliability will be reviewed, largely, from an historical perspective. Five topics will be discussed: oxide breakdown, oxide leakage currents, trap generation, statistics, and reliability. An early model of oxide breakdown, developed by Klein and Solomon, will be described and will be shown to be generally applicable to oxides manufactured today, and to other solid insulators, as well. Both hard and soft breakdowns were included in this model and will be discussed here. The importance of stressinduced-leakage-currents (SILCs) and direct tunneling currents will be discussed in the context of device applications, thinner oxides, and oxide reliability. The diminishing importance of breakdown in ultra thin oxides in ultra small devices will be contrasted with the increasing importance of oxide leakage currents. Trap generation is important in the triggering of breakdown and in the formation of SILCs. Trap generation will be discussed in some detail. Various statistical formulations of oxide breakdown, and how these distributions are related to trap generation, will be discussed. All of these effects will be related to oxide reliability and oxide integrity. An extensive bibliography has been included to help the reader obtain more detailed information concerning the concepts being discussed. Int. J. Hi. Spe. Ele. Syst. 2001.11:617-718. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on 04/10/15. For personal use only. Int. J. Hi. Spe. Ele. Syst. 2001.11:617-718. Downloaded from www.worldscientific.com by UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA on 04/10/15. For personal use only. Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability 619found in an early review paper [20]. This wearout/breakdown model will be referred to as the "Klein/Solomon" model below when comparisons with modern works are needed.The Klein/Solomon model has been refined and confirmed continuously from the 1970s through the present time [10,20,. The extent of the damage is determined both by the 1/2 CV 2 energy stored in the capacitor and by the rate at which this energy discharges through the local hot spot [10,20,75,82,83,88,92,93,96,[100][101][102]. The local hot spot is often accompanied by light emission, in many cases incandescence [8-10, 103-115]. Several techniques have been developed for using the damage introduced during the breakdown to study the breakdown process [80,[116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124]. During the breakdown event, the stored energy in the capacitor, 1/2 CV 2 , partially discharges through the breakdown region in a time limited by the impedance of the total measurement system [8][9][10][82][83][84][85].The local breakdowns are intimately coupled to the trap generation and various trap generation models will be discussed in a separate section.During the breakdowns described by Klein/Solomon, one of two scenarios is possible during and following a breakdown discharge. Which scenario takes place depends on the oxide thickness, the oxide area, the magnitude of the stored energy, the ...

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Section: Reliabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability

Dumin

2001

Int. J. Hi. Spe. Ele. Syst.

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“…Interface trap generation has been seen to be proportional to the exp' v) [490] and, particularly in thinner oxides where the electron energy at the anode is proportional to the gate voltage, time-to-breakdown has been found to be proportional to the exp (V) [522,541,547,635,[846][847][848][849][850][851][852]. Most of the long-time, low-voltage studies of breakdown have shown that the time-to-breakdown is very well fit by an exp <E) relationship, especially at lower voltages [24,102,145,264,265,626,656,660,711,753,820,[853][854][855][856][857][858][859][860][861][862][863][864][865]. It has often been observed that the field acceleration factor in thicker oxides is about 10 MV/cm/decade-in-time [24,626,656,660,753,855].…”

Section: Reliabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability

Dumin

2002

Oxide Reliability

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“…Bearing this concept of equivalence in mind, this leads one to the question of whether the information between each stress level during a linear ramped test can be used in a similar manner-that is, by using the information found between each stress level of a single distribution instead of between constant stress distributions. 1. Schematic of the failure probability that results for three single (V step1 , V step2 , andV step3 ) constant stresses and those that results when the stresses are applied in a sequence (V = stepped stress).…”

Section: Equivalence Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, since the 95% prediction intervals of both lifetime extrapolations do overlap, this technique is very promising to be of great use for fast feedback results during development, qualification, and process control. For comparison, the model accuracy of Chen et al [1] was demonstrated by varying γ values by ±1% and by a log(t 50 ) versus E ox plot; the model accuracy of Mullen et al [2] was shown by fits through their data. The Weibull shape parameter was not explicitly given in both cases, although it was shown here that the shape parameter calculated from ramped tests is strongly dependent on the original distribution.…”

Section: Lifetime Extrapolationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although more uncertainty due to measurement constraints/accuracy is induced by using ramped stress tests, this can be compensated with a very large sample size established through fast parallel or multiplexed testing. Former parameter extraction techniques proposed by Chen et al [1] and Mullen et al [2] require either recording V -t data for each device under test (DUT) or fitting, first, the area dependence of CVS TDDB and ramped current stress (RCS) t bd data and, second, the dependence between the TDDB and RCS data. The technique proposed here gets around the area fitting, TDDB-to-RCS t bd fitting, and V -t recording problem and is, in addition, easy to use and very accurate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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TDDB Data Generation for Fast Lifetime Projections Based on $V$-Ramp Stress Data

Aal

2007

IEEE Trans. Device Mater. Relib.

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Reduced failure rates required by the industry lead to increased costs and time loss for the chip manufacturer since the efforts for continuous process improvements, qualification, screening, and increased test coverage are generally not paid by the customer. However, related costs can be reduced by improved/accelerated reliability testing methods and an approach to a knowledge-based and application-specific qualification and process monitoring strategy. One example of saving time (and costs) during gate oxide reliability testing is given in this paper, showing that time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) data for lifetime extrapolation and quality assessment can be generated from linear ramped voltage test (RVT) data with high accuracy. Given the parameter of the RVT stress profile, the concept of equivalence is successfully applied to convert stress time data at each ramp stress level to corresponding accumulated equivalent ages at any one stress level. Taking into account these ages until breakdown, failure probabilities with the model parameters of the stress-life relationship being the only fitting parameters can directly be computed and converted to TDDB failure distributions.Index Terms-Fast lifetime projection, knowledge-based qualification, time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), V -ramp.

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The correlation of highly accelerated Q/sub bd/ tests to TDDB life tests for ultra-thin gate oxides

Cited by 14 publications

References 13 publications

Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability

Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability

Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability

TDDB Data Generation for Fast Lifetime Projections Based on $V$-Ramp Stress Data

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