Improvement of hot-electron-induced degradation in MOS capacitorsby repeated irradiation-then-anneal treatments

Improvement of the SiO₂/Si interface degradation due to hot-electron injections from silicon by repeated irradiation-then-anneal treatments is described. Each treatment includes an irradiation of Co-60 with a total dose of 10⁶ rd (SiO₂) and an anneal in N₂ for 10 min successively. It is found that the sensitivity to hot-electron induced damage decreases gradually as the number of irradiation-then-anneal treatments increases. After three such treatments, the MOS capacitor shows excellent behavior in terms of its hardness to hot-electron-induced degradation