High voltage time-dependent dielectric breakdown in stacked intermetal dielectrics
Autor: | Honglin Guo, Tom Bonifield, SangHoon Shin, Srikanth Krishnan, Jeff West, Muhammad A. Alam, Byron Lovell Williams, Yen-Pu Chen, Dhanoop Varghese, Woojin Ahn |
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Rok vydání: | 2018 |
Předmět: |
010302 applied physics
Materials science Dielectric strength business.industry Time-dependent gate oxide breakdown High voltage Hardware_PERFORMANCEANDRELIABILITY 02 engineering and technology Dielectric 021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology 01 natural sciences law.invention Capacitor Impact ionization Stack (abstract data type) Hardware_GENERAL law Gate oxide 0103 physical sciences Hardware_INTEGRATEDCIRCUITS Optoelectronics 0210 nano-technology business |
Zdroj: | IRPS |
DOI: | 10.1109/irps.2018.8353669 |
Popis: | Stacked intermetal dielectrics grown by a Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) technique are widely used as a capacitive voltage divider to integrate low and high power ICs. The voltage-divider must sustain multi-kV operation for years in harsh (hot and humid) environment. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the degradation mechanisms of the dielectric is an essential prerequisite for its safe operation. While the reliability of PECVD oxides has been extensively studied, the reliability of stacked oxides, with numerous chemically and mechanically polished (CMP) interfaces, is not fully understood. In fact, the dielectric reliability would differ dramatically if the stack behaves as a single thick capacitor vs. if CMP-damaged interfaces render the stack into a set of capacitors connected in series. In this paper, we use a wide range of the stacked intermetal dielectric (= 1∼20 μτη) to study their Time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) degradation mechanism. Our results demonstrate that the stacked dielectric do behave as a single unit, but unlike conventional TDDB in submicron gate oxide, the TDDB of stacked dielectrics is determined by impact ionization and charge trapping. We explored the degradation mechanism in detail through experiments and simulation; the results are embedded in an acceleration model that can be used to predict TDDB lifetime at arbitrary operating conditions. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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