New insight into the relation between Hot Carrier degradation and oxide breakdown through MVHR

Abstract

Most of the oxide breakdown studies are based on the results of measurements in which the oxide is uniformly stressed thus avoiding the HCI (hot carrier injection) regime. As devices typically undergo hot carrier degradation during their operation, ignoring HCI degradation may result in overestimation of the oxide lifetime. In this paper, a deeper understanding of the relation between HCI and oxide breakdown is obtained based on MVHR (multivibrational hydrogen rRelease) mechanism. Subsequently we model the time to breakdown at different Vg, Vd conditions enabling oxide lifetime assessment in such stress conditions.