Reliability Assessment of Extrinsic Defects in Sinx Metal-Insulator-Metal Capacitors

Metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors are deposited at low temperatures. The dielectrics used for MIM capacitors are amorphous and always contain a certain amount of extrinsic defects. In this paper, the reliability of extrinsic defects in SiN
_x
MIM capacitors as part of a GaAs high voltage (HV) FET process was assessed. It was shown in this paper that the number of extrinsic defects depends on the presence of oval defects in the epitaxial GaAs layers. The reliability assessment was done using electric field breakdown (Ebd), time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) measurements and visual inspection. It was also shown that this combination can lead to an estimate of the lifetime and screening of capacitors containing extrinsic defects