Assessment of uniform and non-uniform damage in plasma etched submicron transistors

Plasma interaction with the silicon wafer during device processing produces serious damage which can affect device performance and reliability. In plasma-induced damage investigations, two different types of damage, one which is uniform over the gate oxide and another which occurs only near the gate edge region, are observed. On the basis of selective sensitivity of different degradation modes of CMOS devices under electrically uniform high-field stress and non-uniform hot-carrier stress, it is shown in this paper that the different types of plasma-related damage can be assessed.