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Oxide Defects

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Bias Temperature Instability for Devices and Circuits

Abstract

This work reviews the recent progress in understanding defects in gate oxides, including acceptor-like electron traps, donor-like hole traps, and process-induced positive charges. Traps can be either as-grown or generated by electrical stresses and their differences will be pointed out. The physical mechanism responsible for trap creation will be examined and the two damaging species are identified: hydrogenous species and free holes in oxides. The key properties of traps will be reported, including trapping kinetics, capture cross sections, effective densities, energy levels, and physical locations. The impact of different types of traps on device performance will be discussed. The dielectrics covered by this work include SiO2, SiON, HfO2/SiON, and HfSiON/SiON and attentions will be paid to the similarity and differences between SiON and Hf-dielectric/SiON stack.

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Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the contribution of I. S. Al-Kofahi, H. K. Sii, W. Zhang, C. Z. Zhao, M. H. Chang, Z. Ji, X. F. Zheng, M. B. Zahid, L. Lin, M. Duan, B. Tang, and B. Benbakhti of Liverpool John Moores University and G. Groeseneken, B. Kaczer, R. Degraeve, L. Pantisano, S. De Gendt, and M. Heyns of IMEC. Test samples were supplied by IMEC. This work was funded by the EPSRC of UK under the grant numbers of EP/C003071/1, EP/C003098/1, EP/C003101/1, and EP/I012966/1.

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  1. School of Engineering, Liverpool John Moores University, Byrom Street, Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK

    Jian F. Zhang

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  1. Institute for Microelectronics, Technische Universität Wien, Wien, Austria

    Tibor Grasser

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Zhang, J.F. (2014). Oxide Defects. In: Grasser, T. (eds) Bias Temperature Instability for Devices and Circuits. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7909-3_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7909-3_10

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