Impact of MOS technological parameters on the detection and modeling of the soft breakdown conduction

Several models have been proposed to explain the I-V characteristic associated with the soft breakdown (SBD) failure mode in ultrathin gate oxides. However, because of the fact that the SBD experimental detection window depends not only on the technological parameters of the device under test, which set the fresh I-V characteristic of the sample, but also on the strength of the breakdown event, there is still a large disagreement about its functional form. In this paper, we show that a power law, for applied voltages less than approximately 3.5 V, and an exponential law for higher voltages are suitable fitting models.