A comprehensive study of hot-carrier induced interface and oxide trap distributions in MOSFETs using a novel charge pumping technique

Abstract

A novel simulation-independent charge pumping (CP) technique is employed to accurately determine the spatial distributions of interface (N/sub it/) and oxide (N/sub 0t/) traps in hot-carrier stressed MOSFETs. Direct separation of N/sub it/ and N/sub 0t/ is achieved without using simulation, iteration, or neutralization. Better immunity from measurement noise is achieved by avoiding numerical differentiation of data. The technique is employed to study the temporal buildup of damage profiles for a variety of stress conditions. The nature of the generated damage and trends in its position are qualitatively estimated from the internal electric field distributions obtained from device simulations. The damage distributions are related to the drain current degradation and well-defined trends are observed with the variations in stress biases and stress time. Results are presented which provide fresh insight into the hot-carrier degradation mechanisms.