.

2259

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 35. NO. 12, DECEMBER 1988

High-Field-Induced Degradation in Ultra-Thin

SO2 Films
PIER0 OLIVO, THAO N. NGUYEN,

MEMBER, IEEE, A N D

BRUNO RICCO,

MEMBER, I E E E

measured current of the voltage-ramped time-zero-breakdown (TZB) test. From VBD,the breakdown field FBDcan
then be calculated if the insulator thickness, flat-band
voltage, and semiconductor band bending are known
(these parameters must be determined with great care in
the case of thin insulators [8]). In addition to FED, the
oxide quality is often characterized by the total injected
charge prior to breakdown QBD and the time to breakdown
tBD.These quantities are measured from time-dependent
breakdown (TDB) experiments where a constant voltage/
current is applied to the device until a sudden current/
voltage change is detected.
In this paper we show that catastrophic breakdown related to the large current jump is not the dominant failure
mechanism of very thin oxides. A new failure mode in
I. INTRODUCTION
HE integrity and reliability of the insulators ( < 10 the form of excessive leakage current at low fields is obnm ) are of great importance to metal-oxide semicon- served after stressing thin oxides at high fields and occurs
ductor (MOS) ultra-large-scale integration (ULSI) tech- long before destructive breakdown [9].
The characteristics of the oxide leakage are studied in
nology and have consequently received increasing attention in the last decade [ 11-[3]. Early publications [13, [2] detail using a variety of measurement techniques. The imreported that the integrity of thermal oxide decreases with plications of the oxide leakage to the results of convenreducing film thickness while their reliability increases. tional TZB and TDB tests are discussed. The origin and
More recently, further work has shown that the integrity conduction mechanism of the leakage current is then inof thin oxide can be maintained by careful processing [4] vestigated. Finally, a model .for the oxide degradation
and exploiting the fundamental aspects of oxide growth during high-field stress is proposed.
kinetics [5], while there seems to be a general consensus
11. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS
that reliability (for instance, as measured by the time to
failure rsD) improves significantly with decreasing oxide A . Experimental Conditions
thickness [3], [ 6 ] , [7]. With regards to reliability, howThe following experimental results have been obtained
ever, it must be stressed that all the data presented so far
in the literature have been obtained with the same tech- from n+ polycrystalline Si gate-thermal oxide-n+ Si subcm2, but deniques used for thick insulators, which, as shown in this strate MOS capacitors whose area was
work, can lead to very serious errors and overestimations. vices with an A1 gate and different substrate types and
The conventional breakdown tests assume that oxide resistivities have also been considered and have been
breakdown causes a large and sudden increase in electri- found to produce qualitatively similar results. The gate
cal conductivity (Le., shorting of the electrodes in MOS oxide was grown in O2 + 4.5-percent HC1 at 800C up
structures). Under such an assumption, the breakdown to a final thickness to, varying from 5.1 to 9.7 nm. Subgate voltage V,, is determined from a large jump in the sequently, the oxide was annealed in Ar ambient.
I-I/ curves have been obtained using an HP4 145B semiManuscript received April 19, 1988; revised July 25, 1988.
conductor parameter analyzer and an HP4 140B picoamP. OIivo was with the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, York- meter. Constant-voltage TDB measurements have been
town Heights, NY 10598. He is now with the DEIS, Universith di Bologna,
performed by means of an HP4140B. High-frequency
Viale Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy.
C-Vplots were carried out by means of an HP4275A inT. N . Nguyen is with the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center,
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598.
ductance-capacitance-resistance (LCR) meter. MeasureB. Ricco is with the DEIS, Universia di Bologna, Viale Risorgimento
ments have been performed at different temperatures from
2, 40136 Bologna, Italy.
IEEE Log Number 8823672.
77 K up to 250C.
Abstract-Very thin thermal oxides are shown to exhibit a failure
mode that is undetected by conventional breakdown tests. This failure
mode appears in the form of excessive leakage current at low field and
is induced by high-field stresses. The stress-induced oxide leakage is
permanent and stable with time and thermal annealing. It becomes the
dominant failure mode of thin oxides because it always precedes destructive breakdown. Experimental results and theoretical calculations
show that the leakage current is not caused by positive charge generation and accumulation in the oxide. It is proposed that the oxide leakage originates from localized defect-related weak spots where the insulator has experienced significant deterioration from electrical stress.
The leakage conduction mechanism appears to he thermally assisted
tunneling through the locally reduced injection harrier, and the model
seems to be consistent with both I-V measurements at temperatures
from 77 K to 250C and theoretical calculations.

0018-9383/88/1200-2259$01.OO 0 1988 IEEE

2260

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES. VOL. 35. NO. 12, DECEMBER 1988
1o

-~

I ob
Before Stress

1o

-~

R f t e r Stress

10-

,..- IO-'
10-I0
1 0-'I

I 0-12
1

IGate Voltage1 [ V I

IGate V o l t a g e [ [ V I

Fig. 1 . Ramp I-Vcharacteristics of two similar 5.1-nm oxide n + poly gate

capacitors (area of
cm2) up to an oxide field of = 12 MV/cm. The
initial I-V ramps (solid lines) show no signs of breakdown, while the
after-stress curves (dashed-dotted lines) exhibit large low-field leakage
currents. Curves a and b have been obtained with a positive gate voltage,
c and d with a negative one.

Fig. 2. Dependence of the leakage current on the stress polarities. Curves

c and d represent after-stress I - V characteristics with positive gate voltage on two similar devices. Curve c was obtained after a positive gate
voltage stress (curve a ) , curve d after a negative voltage stress (curve
b ) . The maximum oxide field ( = 12 MV/cm) was the same for both
stresses.

B. Voltage Ramp Stress

The sequence of I-V curves shown in Fig. 1 illustrates
the presence of a low-field leakage current after a high
field stress. Curve a is the I-V characteristic of a virgin
device obtained with a positive voltage ramp ( 5 mV/s)
increasing until the tunneling current density I J , I reaches
a predefined value (0.1 A/cm2, corresponding to an average oxide field of = 12 MV/cm.) The curve indicates
normal behavior (including well known oscillations [lo])
and without visible signs of breakdown. However, when
the measurement is repeated (curve b ) , a large current
increase at low voltages is evident, indicating that a
change has occurred during the previous ramp. At high
voltages, the current is still essentially identical to that
from the first ramp, and the entire I-Vcurve does not show
any features resembling the breakdown occurring in much
thicker oxides. Similar behavior is found by applying negative voltage ramps to the device (curves c and d ).
The same result can also be obtained by ramping up and
down the gate voltage without disconnecting the device
from the measurement setup. Therefore, it is different
from the low field variations that were observed only after
a disconnection of the device and attributed to a charge
redistribution within the oxide [ 111.
I) Stress Polarity: The behavior of the leakage current
induced by opposite stress polarities can be observed from
the curves of Fig. 2. The dot-dashed curves ( c and d )
represent, respectively, the after-stress characteristics
measured with positive gate voltage after positive (curve
a ) and negative (curve 6 ) gate voltage-ramp stress on
similar devices. For each polarity, the voltage ramp stress
was stopped when the tunneling current density lJ,l
reached 0.1 A/cm2 to insure an identical electric field
being applied to the oxide. The similarity of the afterstress I-V curves, which were reproducible in many pairs
of devices, suggests that the leakage current is independent of the interface from which electrons are injected into
the oxide.
2) Repeated Ramps: The leakage current can be in-

creased progressively by repeating the voltage ramp.

When the stop voltage of the ramps is kept constant, the
low-field leakage current is enhanced, in the form of a
vertical I-V shift, after each ramp, but the additional enhancement gradually diminishes (Fig. 3(a)). The enhancement depends on the stop voltage and tends to diminish quickly after the first few ramps with high stop
voltage. When the stop voltage is successively increased
after each ramp, the amount of leakage current enhancement becomes more or less constant and exhibits a strong
dependence on the size of the voltage increase. Fig. 3(b)
shows the I-V curves of the same capacitor after repeated
ramps with increasing stop voltages. The leakage current
begins to increase after the ramp with 5.2-V peak voltage
and the oxide broke destructively at 5.9 V during the last
ramp (curve i ).
3) Temperature Behavior: The temperature dependence of the leakage current has been studied by repeating
the I-V measurements on one capacitor at 23, 100, 150,
200, and 250C and on a similar device (but bonded and
packaged for cooling purposes) at 23C and at liquid-nitrogen temperature. The voltage ramp of these measurements was limited to 4.5 V, which had been determined
from previous experiments to have no measurable fieldstress-induced oxide leakage during the sequence of measurements. The temperature cycling of the test devices
could potentially introduce thermal stress and affect the
oxide tunneling current. The thermal stress effect was
therefore monitored by performing I- V measurements (at
room temperature) before and after each temperature
cycle. For all cases, the I-V characteristics were identical, suggesting that the thermal stress effect was insignificant. The result of measurements at 77 K , 23"C, lOO"C,
and 250C are shown in Fig. 4 by solid curves a , b, c ,
and d , respectively. The test devices were field stressed
at room temperature by ramping voltage until the tunneling current density IJ, I reached 0.1 A/cm2. The stressinduced leakage was measured at the same set of temperatures using the same procedure as carried out previously.
The thermal stress was found to have no effects on the

2261

OLIVO et ai.: HIGH-FIELD-INDUCED DEGRADATION IN SiO, FILMS

1oa
1o5

--

lo-)

r
(

5
lo-lo

Y
H

I 0-'

10-3

10

10-l0

lo+
10-l2

10-lL

-~

,
'
i 0-l0
10-l'
10-l2

3
4
5
Gate V o l t a g e [ V I
(b)
Fig. 3 . Leakage current increase induced by repeated voltage ramps. (a)
Sequence of curves (from a , virgin device, t o j ) with the same maximum
voltage (5.5 V). The leakage current increase depends on the maximum
applied voltage. With 6 V applied (Fig. 1, curves a and b ) , the afterstress characteristic is reproduced by successive ramps. (b) Dependence
of the measured current on the stop voltages of I-V ramps. The voltage
ramp is repeated on the same capacitor with increasing stop values: 5 V
(curvea, virgin sample), 5.2 V (curveb), 5.4 V (curvec), 5.5 V (curve
2

d),5.6V(curvee),5.7V(curvef),5.8V(curveg),and5.9V(curve
h ) . The leakage current begins to increase after the ramp with 5.2-V
peak voltage and the capacitor broke destructively at 5.9-V during (curve
i ) ramp.

I1

Fig. 5. Dependence of the leakage current on the oxide thickness. Solid

and dashed-dotted lines represent I-V curves on virgin and stressed samples, respectively. The oxide thickness was: 5.1 nm (curve a ) , 6.0 nm
(curve b ) , 7.5 nm (curve c), and 9.7 nm ( c u r v e d ) .

(a)

lo-'
10-

G a t e Voltage [ V I

Gate V o l t a g e [ V I

1o

oxide leakage and the oxide leakage is stable at high temperatures. The data for 77 K, 23"C, lOO"C, 250C measurements are shown as dashed-dotted curves a , 6 , c, and
d , respectively, in Fig. 4.
As temperature rises, both the stress-induced oxide
leakage and the tunneling current before stress increase,
but the temperature behavior is very different. For the oxide leakage, the temperature effect is larger at low fields,
and the field dependence is weaker at high temperatures.
The tunneling current from unstressed devices shows a
constant increase with temperature at all fields as one
would expect.
4) Oxide Thickness Dependence: The oxide-thickness
dependence of the leakage current has been investigated
using capacitors with different oxide thickness but prepared by the same fabrication process. Fig. 5 shows the
I- V characteristics before (solid) and after stress (dotdashed) for 5.1 nm (curve a ) , 6.0 nm (curve b ) , 7.5 nm
(curve c ) , and 9.7 nm (curve d ) thermal oxides subjected
to the same stress conditions. The low-field leakage phenomenon becomes increasingly significant in very thin
oxides while the predominant effect of electrical stress in
thicker films is electron trapping, as indicated by the positive voltage shift in case d .

'
A

lod

5
H
e

lo+

1O-lL
1.5

2.5

3.5

4.5

Gate V o l t a g e [ V I

Fig. 4. Before (solid lines) and after-stress (dashed-dotted lines) characteristics at different temperatures (77 K (curve a ) , 23OC (curve b ) ,
100C (curve c), and 250C (curve d ) ) . Curves b , c, and d were obtained from the same device, curve a from a similar device presenting
the same virgin I-Vcharacteristic at room temperature. The experimental
conditions are described in the text.

C . Constant Voltage Stress

The oxide leakage current can also be induced by a constant voltage stress commonly used in wear-out or TDB
tests. Fig. 6 illustrates the progressive development of the
leakage current (calculated as the difference between the
measured and the initial tunneling current) as a function
of the injected charge density, obtained by periodically
interrupting the stress (5.5 V) and monitoring the current
at low gate voltages. The stress-induced leakage begins
to occur at low levels of electron fluence and long before
catastrophic breakdown. The leakage increases with time
and electron fluence at a decreasing rate and becomes essentially saturated beyond an electron fluence of lo2'
cm-2. The destructive breakdown occurred at 95 h of
cmP2or 5600 C/cm-2.
stress at a fluence of 3.5 x

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES. VOL. 35. NO. I?. DECEMBER 1988

itself. Although the oxide leakage is not a catastrophic

breakdown, it presents a serious problem and should be
recognized as an oxide failure. Many devices such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and electrically
+
d
-'
0"
/
*
,
7
erasable-programmable read-only memory (E2PROM)
++J
cannot tolerate much leakage currents, especially at low
+
+"/
V
b
+ +++'
fields comparable to the devices' operating conditions.
++ +
These devices will fail when the oxide becomes suffi++ +++ +
/
a
ciently leaky, not when the oxide breaks down catastro+++
++s' /
+
+
d
phically.
A+
Because oxide leakage always precedes destructive
breakdown,
it becomes the dominant failure mode of thin
10''
10"
10"
lopo
10''
lop
lon
oxides. It is more relevant, from the device application
Electron Fluence Cel/cm2 1
viewpoint, to determine the onset of a critical oxide leakFig. 6 . Increase of the low-field leakage current (calculated as the differage rather than catastrophic breakdown. The criterion for
ence between the measured and the initial tunneling current) as a function of electron fluence for a capacitor stressed at a constant voltage of
oxide failure should be derived from the leakage require5.5 V . The stress was periodically interrupted to monitor the current
ment of specific device application. For ramp tests, the
increase at 2.5 V (curve a),3 V (curve b ) , 3.5 V (curve c ) , 4 V (curve
voltage inducing the critical current is defined as the faild 1, and 4.5 V (curve e ) until catastrophic breakdown (tbd = 95 h, Qbd
= 5600 C/cm*).
ure voltage to differentiate from conventional destructive
breakdown voltage. The failure voltage is difficult to determine exactly but can be estimated by repeating I-V
1
ramps and increasing the stop voltage by a small increment, as shown in Fig. 3(b), until the critical leakage cur.9
rent is observed. The accuracy of the failure voltage improves with a decreasing voltage increment. However,
2 .8
V
small voltage steps result in a large number of I-V ramps
V
before the critical leakage is detected, and many repeated
.7
ramps can potentially weaken or wear out the thin oxide
and
lower the failure voltage. A similar technique [13],
.6
in which the I-V ramps are replaced by a series of voltage
pulses with increasing amplitude (the device is stressed
.5
-1
-. 5
0
.5
1
during the high-voltage level of the pulse and the leakage
current is monitored during the low-voltage level), can
Gate Voltage [VI
minimize the oxide wear out. Based on an arbitrary curFig. 7. High-frequency (100-kHz) C-V plots before (solid line) and after
stresses similar to those of Fig. 1. The dashed line represents the C-V
rent criterion of 10-pA leakage current at 3 V, the failure
plot after a positive gate voltage stress and is practically indistinguishvoltage
of the device of Fig. 3(b) is between 5.7 and 5 . 8
able from the virgin curve. The dashed-dotted line is the C-V plot after
V . The conventional TZB test applied to similar devices
a negative voltage stress.
on the same wafer produces a very tight distribution of
destructive breakdown voltages, centered around 7.5 V
D. C- V Meusurements
( F E D ,= 14.6 MV/cm). It should be noticed that the deC-V plots have been performed on virgin and stressed structive breakdown voltage is 30 percent higher than the
devices as shown in Fig. 7. A noticeable C-V shift cor- failure voltage, and the conventional TZB test overestiresponding to positive charge within the insulator is ob- mates the field strength of thin oxides.
served after a negative voltage stress. This result is simFor constrant stress tests, the total injected charge to
ilar to that for thick oxides [12]. The positive voltage failure and the time to failure can be defined as the custress produces insignificant shift in the C-V curve.
mulative charge and time at which the critical leakage
current is produced. These parameters should be differ111. DISCUSSION
entiated from Q B D and f B 0 at the destructive breakdown
A . Implications of Stress-Induced Low-Field Leakage
event. The total charge and time to failure can be deterMost conventional TZB and TDB tests cannot detect mined by periodically interrupting the stress and monitorthe occurrence of stress-induced oxide leakage at low ing the oxide leakage, as illustrated in Fig. 6, until the
voltages because the measurements and breakdown deter- critical leakage current is reached. Using the failure crimination concentrate in the high-current and high-field re- terion of 10 pA at 3 V as before, the device of Fig. 6 fails
gion. During a high-field stress such as the voltage ramp at an electron fluence of lOI9 cm-? ( 1 . 6 C/cm2) after
stress illustrated in Fig. 1, the oxide was degraded and about 100 s of stress. This device exhibits catastrophic
became leaky, but this degradation was not at all obvious breakdown at QBD = 5600 C/cm2 and
= 95 h, which
from the original I- V curve. Only after repeated I- V mea- represents a more than three-orders-of-magnitude insurements at low voltages did the oxide leakage reveal crease from the values of the charge and time to failure.
+

'+/

+
+
+
/,"

OLlVO el a l . : HIGH-FIELD-INDUCED DEGRADATION IN SiO, FILMS

2263

The enhancement of tunneling current by positive

charge is a positive-feedback process. The enhanced current generates more positive charge, which then increases
the current further. The relationship between positive
charge and tunneling current is exponential because the
positive charge affects the current through reducing the
injection barrier or increasing the cathode field. The process can lead to self-destruction of the insulator in a very
short time [ 151. Because of the positive feedback and exB. Origin and Mechanism of Oxide Leakage
ponential relationship, the current enhancement under
Low-field current enhancement similar to Fig. 1 has constant voltage stress grows at an increasing rate with
been observed in ultra-thin-oxide metal-gate capacitors time and produces a rapid current increase [ 161. The beafter negatively biased stress [lo]. The effect was attrib- havior of the leakage current in Fig. 6 is not consistent
uted to the generation and accumulation of positive charge with the characteristic of positive charge. The current incenters located near the Si-SiO, (anode) interface. These creases at a decreasing rate with time and eventually stops
charge centers create potential wells that reduce the tun- growing. One might argue that the periodic interruptions
neling barrier and enhance the current injection. It was of the stress could potentially cause the observed behavior
also reported that the positive charge could be annealed through charge relaxation, but the oxide leakage does not
out at relatively low (100C) temperatures, and its density decrease with time after the electrical stress is discontincould be determined from the C-V shift. However, stud- ued. The recombination of positive charge by tunneling
ies on the effects of stress polarity and C-Vmeasurements electrons may appear as a plausible explanation for the
suggest that the current increase observed here is not due saturation of the leakage current (Fig. 6), but it is hard to
to this kind of positive charge.
explain an increasing recombination rate when the tunFirst of all, the after-stress Z-V characteristics (Fig. 2 ) neling electron current decreases because of electron trapare essentially independent of the polarity used during the ping.
stress. This implies that if accumulated charges are reBased on these considerations and the inconsistency of
sponsible for the oxide leakage they must be symmetri- I-V and C-V data after opposing stresses, one can rule
cally distributed within the oxide. Any positive charge out the possibility of localized positive charge being renear the anode interface, with reversed bias, would end sponsible for the low-field leakage current. This concluup at the cathode interface, and its influence on the tun- sion is also supported on a theoretical basis. Numerical
neling current would be completely different. The inde- calculations have been performed to evaluate the feasibilpendence of stress polarity can be explained by a similar ity of the model of localized positive charge near the cathdistribution of positive charge being generated by each ode interface. The calculations employed the Wentzelstress and located at the midpoint of the oxide film.
Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) expression to compute the
This positive charge should then produce an identical transmission coefficients through a potential barrier. The
negative voltage shift in the C-V curve after each stress. shape of the tunneling barrier was determined from the
The C-V data of Fig. 7 reveal that there was indeed pos- one-dimensional Poissons solution.
itive charge in the oxide, but the negative voltage shift is
In general, the injected current can be expressed as I ,
considerably smaller for positive than for negative voltage = AJo T , where A is the device area, Jo the current density
stress. In either case, the magnitude of the shift is too hitting the injecting interface, and T the transmission coefsmall to account for the current enhancement. One can ficient. The calculation of Jo requires a knowledge of the
still argue that the positive charge is very localized or un- distribution of injecting levels, which is difficult to deterevenly distributed in the lateral dimension and results in a mine because of two-dimensional quantum effects at the
small average charge density from C- V measurements. semiconductor interface. For the sake of simplicity, a sinYet it is difficult to reconcile the different effects of the gle injecting level at the silicon conduction band edge can
positive charge generated by opposite stresses on the I-V be assumed. As a consequence, Jo is assumed to be inand C- V curves.
dependent of the oxide charge so that only the transmisIn a recently reported model [15], high-field cata- sion coefficient needs to be computed. The obtained restrophic breakdown in oxides is attributed to localized ac- sults will not be exact but should reveal the qualitative
cumulation of trapped holes at weak spots in the oxide. effects of localized positive charge.
The trapped holes enhance current injection by increasing
In the presence of a localized charge within the oxide,
the cathode field and lead to the formation of local high- the injected current can be expressed as
field/current density regions. The total current is then
composed of two parallel components: one coming from
the weak spots and the other from the remaining good
oxide area. This model proposes that positive charge ac- where A , and T,, A , and T,, are the area and the transcumulation occurs near the cathode interface rather than mission coefficients of the good and weak part of the oxide, respectively. From this equation, a global transmisthe anode interface as in an earlier model [ 101.
Part of this increase might be due to the relaxation induced by the interruption of high-field stress [14], necessary to monitor the leakage current. However, it is reasonable to conclude that the conventional TDB test that
determines destructive breakdown in the high-current/
voltage regime also leads to overestimation of the actual
reliability of thin oxides.

2264

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES. VOL. 35. NO. 12, DECEMBER 1988

6
2

Gate V o l t a g e [ V I

Fig. 8. Calculated global transmission coefficients in presence of localized

positive charge. The oxide thickness was 5 nm. Traps, whose concentration was 8 . 5 x 10'' cm-3, were uniformly distributed between 0 and
1 nm (dashed-dotted lines) and between 4 and 5 nm (dotted lines) from
the Si-SiO, injecting interface. The ratio between the weak and good
(curve b ) , and
(curve
area of the device was: IO-'(curve a ) ,
c). The solid line represents the completely good device.

Gate V o l t a g e [ V I

Fig. 9. Calculated global transmission coefficients in presence of localized

positive charge. The oxide thickness was 5 nm. Traps were uniformly
distributed between 0 and 1 nm (dashed-dotted lines) and between 4 and
5 nm (dotted lines) from the Si-SiO, injecting interface. The ratio between the weak and good area of the device was lo-'. The trap concentration was: 7 . 5 x IOzo cm-' (curve a ) , 8 . 5 x IO2" cm-' (curve b ) ,
and 10" cm-j (curve c ) . The solid line represents the completely good
device.

sion coefficient T can be defined as

2.5

3.5

2; +

A,
- T,.
A

Two series of T calculations have been performed. In

the first series (Fig. 8), the oxide charge density was fixed
at 8.5 X lo2' cmP3and was uniformly distributed within
1 nm from either interface of a 5-nm SiOz film while the
ratio of weak to good oxide area was vaned. In the second
series (Fig. 9), the area ratio was kept constant at
while the charge density was varied.
From Figs. 8 and 9 it can be concluded that: 1) the
location of the localized charge has a very strong influence on the transmission coefficient; 2) positive charge
near the cathode interface is not likely to be responsible
for the oxide leakage because the resulting I-Vcurve does
not agree qualitatively with experiments; 3) positive

4.5

Fig. 10. Fowler-Nordheim fitting of the leakage current at room temperature. Curvesf, g, h , i are from Fig. 3(b).

charge near the anode interface can, in principle, be responsible for the leakage current. However, the charge
density required to account for the leakage is unrealistically high.
At this point we have to rule out the positive charge
model on both experimental and theoretical grounds. We
believe that the stress-induced oxide leakage originates
from localized defect-related weak spots where the insulator has experienced significant deterioration from electrical stress. The deterioration is not of electrical nature
but in the form of physical and/or chemical changes because the oxide leakage is permanent and stable with time
and thermal annealing.
The conduction mechanism of the leakage current I, was
investigated by fitting experimental data obtained at different temperatures with many possible I- V expressions.
The Frenkel-Pool and Schottky emission agreed reasonably well with the field dependence of ZIbut only at room
temperature and when field-induced barrier lowering and
a large series resistance were included. The field emission
(Fowler-Nordheim) [17] offers the best fit to both field
and temperature dependence and appears to be the most
likely mechanism for conduction at weak spots. Fig. 10
plots the fitting curves based on the tunneling equation

ZI = GV2 exp ( - P / V )
T = -A
A

Gate V o l t a g e [ V I

(3)

and the room-temperature I-V characteristics of the leakage current taken from Fig. 3(b). In (3), G represents a
pre-exponential factor containing the area of the weak
spot, V the applied gate voltage, and 0 a constant factor
depending on the barrier height. If the tunneling barrier
can be considered to be triangular, for the sake of simplicity, then its height is 0.91 eV. The curvature of the
measurable after-stress I-V characteristics is consistent
with a conduction mechanism due to Fowler-Nordheim
tunneling through a low barrier. In fact, a flex in the I-V
characteristics, denoting a transition of the conduction
mechanism from direct to Fowler-Nordheim tunneling
[18] is present only in the virgin devices. Very good fitting to all measured I-V curves is achieved by changing
G and keeping the barrier height constant.

OLIVO

el

a / . : HIGH-FIELD-INDUCED DEGRADATION IN SiO, FILMS

10-

10"

2265
0.8,

0.6
P)
Y

0.4

0.2

0.0
1o*

1O-f

1o'

Injected Electrons ClIeVI

(a)
1.5

2.5

3.5

4.5

Gate Voltage [VI

Fig. 11. Fowler-Nordheim fitting of the leakage current measured at different temperatures. Curves a (77 K), b (23"C), c (IOO"C), and d (250C)
are from Fig. 4. The resulting triangular equivalent barrier heights are:
1 . 1 eV (curve a ) , 0.91 eV (curve b ) , 0.85 eV (curve c ) , and 0.66 eV
(curved).

Experiments on the temperature dependence of the tunneling current show that, as temperature increases, the
virgin current rises but maintains the same field dependence. On the contrary, the leakage current displays a
weaker field dependence at high temperatures, and the
temperature effects tend to vanish at high fields.
The fitting of experimental curves at temperatures varying from liquid nitrogen to 250C (Fig. 11) to the tunneling expression (see (3)) reveals that the equivalent triangular barrier height reduces from 1.1 eV at 77 K to
0.66 eV at 250C. The experimental temperature dependence and the reduction of the equivalent triangular barrier height are consistent with the thermally assisted tunneling process with low injection barrier.
The decrease in effective barrier height can be attributed
to an increase of the thermal energy of electrons as temperature rises. The temperature behavior of the leakage
can be explained with the aid of Fig. 12, which plots the
distributions of electrons injected through a barrier height
of 1.1 eV at different temperatures for two values of gate
voltage. The distributions are computed from the product
of the energy-dependent transmission coefficients and the
distribution of electrons in the conduction band, based on
the method in [19]. At low voltage (Fig. 12(a)), the tunneling transmission coefficients are small and the distributions are strongly dependent on the Fermi-Dirac probaDi!ity of ~ccupancy, which varies exponentially with
temperature. The maximum value of the distribution is
rather the same for temperatures over 0C but, at the
highest temperatures, it is far from the bottom of the conduction band, assumed as a reference, and the distribution
itself broadens over a large energy interval. Hence, the
oxide leakage should be sensitive to temperature at low
fields. At high voltage (Fig. 12(b)), the tunneling transmission coefficients are very large and the distributions
become less dependent on the energy of electrons. The
distributions of injected electrons peak near the bottom of
the conduction band and the temperature effects are practically negligible.

1o'

10'

1oe

10'

Injected Electrons Cl/eVl

(b)
Fig. 12. Calculated distribution of electron injected through a barrier height
of 1.1 eV at different temperatures for two values of gate voltage. The
oxide thickness was 5 nm. The temperatures were: 77 K (curve a ) , 23C
(curve b ) , 100C (curve c), and 250C (curve d ) . (a) gate voltage of
2 V; (b) gate voltage of 4 V.

The following model for the evolution of thin-oxide

degradation is proposed. Very thin thermal oxides have
localized weak spots that probably come from imperfections such as submicrometer particles and small-scale
surface roughness on the silicon surface before oxidation.
High-field stress destroys the integrity of thin oxides at
these weak spots by changing the oxide physically andlor
chemically. This change leads to a reduced tunneling barrier and causes a local enhancement of the tunneling current that appears as the stress-induced oxide leakage at
low fields. The onset of this enhancement depends on the
magnitude of the electrical stress and the leakage current
progressively increases with the continuation of the stress.
The parallelism of the after-stress I-V characteristics (see
Fig. 10) indicates that the leakage conduction maintains
the same field dependence as the oxide proceeds toward
catastrophic failure. -This property, along with the simulation results showing that only the area-dependent parameter G need be changed in order to fit different characteristics, suggests that: 1) the weak spots propagate
laterally (i.e., enlarging the defect area instead of penetrating through the oxide film) and 2) the barrier height
remains constant during the evolution of the weak spots.
The total defect area widens gradually with time but tends
to saturate after some time (Figs. 3(a), 6). The constant
triangular equivalent barrier height also suggests that the
reduced tunneling barrier is not due to accumulation of
defects but to the formation of a different and well defined
phase of the involved material.

2266

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES. VOL. 35. NO. 12. DECEMBER 1988

The described phenomenon is present (or, at least, is

measurable) predominantly in thin insulators. This result
may be due: 1) to different growing conditions (as many
weak spots will disappear or become less critical in thicker
oxides [ 5 ] , [20])or 2) to the difficulty, in thicker oxides,
of creating a low-barrier high-conductivity path connecting the two interfaces.
Finally, it should be mentioned that the familiar sudden
and catastrophic breakdown occurs some time after the
leakage saturation, and it is not yet known whether this
event takes place at a new location or at the same weak
spots responsible for the increased leakage.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
A new failure mode of very thin Si02 films has been
investigated. High field stress was found to produce a
leakage current (observable at low field) which cannot be
tolerated in many circuit applications and should be regarded as the first and true oxide failure. conventional
time-zero and time-dependent breakdown tests fail to detect this stress-induced leakage and therefore result in significant overestimation of the integrity and reliability data.
The origin of the increased leakage is studied and shown
to be unrelated to the generation and accumulation of positive charge. It is proposed that the leakage originates from
localized defect-related weak spots which experienced
significant deterioration during electrical stress and become more conductive due to a low interface barrier. The
I- I/ measurements at different temperatures and theoretical calculations suggest that the conduction mechanism of
the leakage current is thermally-assisted tunneling through
a barrier of about 1 eV. The stress-induced degradation
was shown to evolve gradually with time by enlarging defect area.
This work demonstrates that very thin oxides behave
differently from thicker oxides and as a result, they require extra care in the measurements as well as data interpretation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are very grateful to S. A. Cohen for his
help during the experiments, to Dr. A. Modelli (SGSThomson) for helpful discussion, to Dr. G. W . Rubloff
for comments on the manuscript and encouragement, and
to Dr. N. 0. Lipad for support in this work.

REFERENCES
[l] S. P. Li and J . Maserjian, Effective defect density for MOS breakdown: Dependence on oxide thickness, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. ED-23, p. 52.5, 1976.
[2] Y.-P. Han, J . Mize, T . Mozdzen, T. OKeepe, J. Pinto, and R. Worfey. Ultra-thin gate-oxide characteristics and MOS/VLSI scaling
implications, in IEDM Tech. Dig., p. 98, 1982.
[3] I. C. Chen, S. Holland, K. K. Young, C. Chang, a n d C . Hu, Substrate hole current and oxide breakdown, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 49,
p. 669, 1986.
141 D. A. Baglee, Characteristics and reliability of 100 A oxides, in
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151 T. N. Nguyen and D. L. Quinlan, High quality 100 A thermal oxide, in Proc. MRS Symp. Materials Issues in Silicon Integrared Circuit Processing. M. Wittmer, J. Stimmell, and M. Strathman, Eds.,
vol. 71, p. S05, 1986.
161 I. C . Chen, S. Holland. and C . Hu, Hole trapping and breakdown
in thin SiO,, IEEEElecrron Device Lett., vol. EDL-7, p. 164. 1986.

M.-S. Liang and J. Y. Choi, Thickness dependence of oxide breakdown under high field and current stress, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 50,
p. 104, 1987.
B. Riccb, P. Olivo, T . N. Nguyen, T. S. Kuan, and G. Ferriani,
Oxide thickness determination in thin insulator MOS structures,
IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 35, p. 432, 1988.
T. N. Nguyea, P. Olivo, and B. Ricc6, A new failure mode of very
thin ( < 5 0 A ) thermal SiO, films, in Proc. IEEE Int. Rel. Phys.
Symp. (IRPS), p. 66, 1987.
J . Maserjian and N. Zamani, Behavior of the Si-SiO, interface observed by Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 53, p.
559, 1982.
P. Olivo, B. Riccb, and E. Sangiorgi, High-field-induced voltagedependent oxide charge, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 48, p. 1135, 1986.
P. Olivo, B. Riccb, T. N. Nguyen, T. S. Kuan, and S. J. Jeng, Evidence of the role of defects near the injecting interface in determining
SiO, breakdown, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 51, p. 2245, 1987.
P. A. Heimann, An operational definition for breakdown of thin
thermal oxides in silicon, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. ED30, p. 1366, 1983.
Y. Fong, I. C. Chen, S. Holland, J . Lee, and C. Hu, Dynamic
stress of thin oxide, in IEDM Tech. D i g . , p. 664, 1986.
I. C. Chen, S. E. Holland, and C. Hu, Electrical breakdown in thin
gate and tunneling oxides, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. ED32, p. 413, 1985.
Z. A. Weinberg and T . N. Nguyen, The relation between positive
charge and breakdown in metal-oxide-silicon structures, J . Appl.
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M. Lenzlinger and E. H. Snow, Fowler-Nordheim tunneling into
thermally grown SiOz, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 40, p. 278, 1969.
L. A. Kasprzak, R. B. Laibowitz, and M. Ohring, Dependence of
the Si-Si0 barrier height on SiO, thickness in MOS tunnel structures, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 48, p. 4281, 1977.
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T. N. Nguyen, P. Olivo, D. L. Quinlan, and G. W. Rubloff, presented at the Amer. Vacuum Soc. Symp., Baltimore MD, 1986.

*
Piero Olivo was born in Bologna, Italy, in 1956.
He received the B.S. degree in 1980 and the Ph.D.
degree in 1987, both from the University of Bologna.
Since 1983, he has been an Assistant Professor
of Applied Electronics at the University of Bologna. In 1986-1987, he was a Visiting Scientist
at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center,
Yorktown Heights, NY. His scientific interests are
in the area of solid-state devices. His research activities include SiO,- physics,
electron transport
..
and trapping through thin SiOl structures, hot-carrier effects in MOSFETs, oxide breakdown and reliability, MOS measurement techniques,
and thin oxide properties. He is currently interested in IC testing, with
emphasis on design for testability and fault simulation.

*
Thao N. Nguyen (S75-M83) received the B.E
degree (honors class I and university medal) from
the University of New South Wales, Australia, in
1978 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineenng from Stanford University in 1980 and
1984, respectively. His undergraduate and graduate research work involved device physics, modeling, simulation, fabrication, and characterization of power DMOSFETs, CCDs, and smallgeometry surface-channel and buried-channel
MOSFETs.
He joined the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in 1983 as a
research staff member working on exploratory silicon matenals and processes. He became Manager of Growth, Interfaces and Analysis in 1987
His research interests include advanced low-temperature processes (UHV/
CVD epitaxy, PECVD insulators, and CVD tungsten) and their applications to ULSI devices, thin oxide growth and characterization, oxide breakdown and reliability, MOS measurement techniques, and process-induced
defects. He has authored or coauthored over 30 technical papers related to
these areas and has received an Outstanding Technical Achievement Award
from IBM.
Dr. Nguyen is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, the MRS, the
APS, and the Electrochemical Society

OLIVO et ai.: HIGH-FIELD-INDUCED DEGRADATION IN SiO, FILMS

Bruno Ricc6 (M85) was born in Parma, Italy, in

1947. He graduated in electrical engineenng from
the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, in 1971
and received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge, Cambndge, United Kingdom,
in 1975.
While at the University of Cambridge, he
worked at the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1980, he
became a full Professor of Applied Electronics at
the University of Padova, Italy. In 1983, he joined
the Department of Electronics of the University of

2267
Bologna. In 1981, he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Stanford,
Stanford, CA, and, later, at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center,
Yorktown Heights, NY. His scientific interests concern solid-state devices
and integrated circuits. In particular, he has worked on electron transport
in polycrystalline silicon, tunneling in heterostructures, silicon dioxide
physics, hot-electron effects in MOSFETs, latch up in C-MOS structures,
and Monte Carlo simulation. He is also interested in circuit design and
testing.
Dr. Ricc6 serves as the Associate Editor for Europe of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON
DEVICES.