Degradation of ultra-thin gate oxides accompanied by hole direct tunneling: can we keep long-term reliability of p-MOSFETs?

Degradation of ultra-thin gate oxide films accompanied by hole direct tunneling is investigated using a substrate hot hole injection technique. Although cold hole injection from the inversion layer of p-MOSFET does not affect the oxide reliability, the drastic degradation during the hot hole injection was observed. The new experimental findings on the hot-hole induced oxide degradation are well explained by the model of two-hole capture by an O vacancy.