The investigation of capture/emission mechanism in high-k gate dielectric soft breakdown by gate current random telegraph noise approach

Abstract

In this paper, the trapping/detrapping in high-k gate dielectrics has been analyzed by gate current random telegraph noise (I(G)) measurement. Gate current is suppressed when traps capture electrons and recovers for empty traps. By statistically extracting capture and emission times, we can understand the trap properties. Besides, the influence will be understood by observing the variation of Gate current fluctuation. Through the analysis of the device after soft-breakdown (SBD), the deterioration of the dielectric will change the capture cross section. Moreover, the traps in the SBD path have been identified as the cause of a huge increase in the gate leakage.