Explaining `Voltage-Driven' Breakdown Statistics by Accurately Modeling Leakage Current Increase in Thin SiON and SiO2/High-K Stacks

The statistical properties of the hard BD distribution in the presence of a digital soft BD are demonstrated. In very thin oxides, hard breakdown is not Weibull distributed, and if approximated by a Weibull distribution, the distribution parameters will be area and voltage dependent. We show how information on the digital soft BD distribution can be extracted from the leakage current increase preceding the hard BD. By generalizing this interpretation the time dependence of conventional stress-induced leakage current (SILC) in ultra-thin dielectrics is analytically modeled