The effect of channel hot-carrier stressing on gate-oxide integrityin MOSFETs |
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Authors: | Chen Ih-Chin Choi Jeong Yeol Hu Chenming |
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Affiliation: | Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA; |
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Abstract: | The correlation between channel hot-carrier stressing and gate-oxide integrity is studied. It is found that channel hot carriers have no detectable effect on gate-oxide integrity even when other parameters (e.g., ΔVT and ΔI D) have become intolerably degraded. In the extreme cases of stressing at VG≈VT with measurable hole injection current, however, the oxide charge to breakdown decreases linearly with the amount of hole fluence injected during the channel hot-hole stressing. This may limit the endurance of a nonvolatile memory using hot holes for erasing. This can also explain the gate-to-drain breakdown of a device biased in the snap-back region, since snap-back at low gate voltage is favorable for hole injection. Snap-back-induced oxide breakdown could be an ESD (electrostatic discharge) failure mechanism |
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