Temperature-accelerated dielectric breakdown in ultrathin gate oxides

Abstract

Temperature-accelerated effects on dielectric breakdown of ultrathin gate oxide with thickness ranging from 8.7 to 2.5 nm are investigated and analyzed. Although superior reliability for ultrathin gate oxide at room temperature has been reported in recent literatures, a strong temperature-accelerated degradation of oxide reliability is observed in this study. Experimental results show that both charge-to-breakdown (Q(bd)) and breakdown field (E-bd) characteristics are greatly aggravated for ultrathin oxide at elevated temperature. The Arrhenius plot also confirms that the activation energies of Q(bd) and E-bd increase significantly as oxide thickness decreases, explaining the higher sensitivity to temperature for thinner oxides. (c) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)02024-0].