Temperature effect on ultrathin SiO2 time-dependent-dielectric-breakdown

The unusually high temperature acceleration in ultrathin oxide time-dependentdielectric-breakdown and the non-Arrhenius behavior are one of the current outstanding puzzles in oxide reliability research. In this letter, both phenomena are explained using the recently developed kinetic model. It is found that in thick oxide the degradation kinetic is controlled by hole trapping while in thin oxide it is controlled by the consumption of trapped holes. The consumption of trapped holes is further found to be a competition between hole detrapping and electron capturing, leading to the observed non-Arrhenius behavior. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.