HIGH-FREQUENCY FATIGUE TESTING OF FERROELECTRIC MEMORY CAPACITORS

Fatigue testing of typical process-development ferroelectric capacitors requires application of controlled high-frequency waveforms to a capacitor (in the nF range) whose impedance at frequencies of interest is only a few OMEGA. Only experimental setups which have been designed with this fact in mind will give meaningful results. We analyze a range of typical setups and give the maximum fatigue frequency for each. A simple, standard setup may only allow frequencies of 20 kHz (10(9) cycles in an overnight run). A well-optimized setup will work at frequencies in the MHz range, allowing reaching 10(11) cycles in an overnight run.