Electrical overstress and electrostatic discharge |
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Authors: | Diaz C. Kang S.M. Duvvury C. |
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Affiliation: | IC Bus. Div., Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, CA ; |
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Abstract: | Semiconductor devices have a limited ability to sustain electrical overstress (EOS). The device susceptibility to EOS increases as the device is scaled down to submicron feature size. At present, EOS is a major cause for IC failures. Published reports indicate that nearly 40% of IC failures can be attributed to EOS events. Hence, EOS threats must be considered early in the design process. For semiconductor devices, EOS embodies a broad range of electrical threats due to electromagnetic pulses, electrostatic discharge (ESD), system transients, and lightning. EOS-related failures in semiconductor devices can be classified according to their primary failure mechanisms into: thermally-induced failures, electromigration, electric-field-related failures. In general, thermally-induced failures are related to the doping level, junction depth, and device characteristic-dimensions whereas electric-field induced failures are primarily related to the breakdown of thin oxides in MOS devices |
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