Proof-of-Concept Structure for Investigation of Successive Soft Gate Oxide Breakdowns in Two Dimensions

Abstract

In this paper we describe a structure designed and fabricated for the purpose of locating successive SBD's in 2D. It is shown that the original BD location method can be readily extended to 2D, for both accumulation (Degraeve et al., 2001) and inversion (Crupi et al., 2005). It is concluded that the locations of two successive SBD's can be readily distinguished and that subsequent SBD events do not appear to be correlated within the analysis of this work. Limitations in downscaling the structure are also discussed.