Anode hole injection versus hydrogen release: the mechanism for gate oxide breakdown

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that post-metallization anneal in deuterium can improve transistor lifetime by one order of magnitude or more. In this paper, we show that the gate oxide reliability of devices annealed in deuterium is similar to that of devices annealed in hydrogen. This finding suggests that a model for gate oxide breakdown which involves release of interfacial hydrogen may not be accurate.