Gate Oxide Reliability Under ESD-Like Pulse Stress.

The reliability of very thin gate oxide under electrostatic discharge-like pulse stress is investigated. Time-dependent dielectric break- down of gate oxide with thicknesses ranging from 2.2 to 4.7 nm is characterized down to the nanosecond lime regime. The l/E model best fits the time-to-breakdown data. Self-heating does not need to be incorporated into the time-to-breakdown model. The oxide trap generation rate is a function of the stress pulse-width for nanosecond and microsecond stress pulses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]