Program disturbs and process optimization in a 65 nm Flash FPGA

We present studies of an extrinsic program disturb mechanism in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) fabricated with a 65 nm embedded-Flash process. It is concluded that multiple positive charges are involved during disturb to explain the observed extrinsic behavior. Its failure rate was improved with tunnel oxidation process tuning and stronger pre-oxidation cleans.