Temperature acceleration of oxide breakdown and its impact on ultra-thin gate oxide reliability

A systematic study of oxide reliability is presented in the thickness range 13.8 nm to 2.8 nm. It is demonstrated that (i) the time-to-breakdown should be extrapolated as a function of gate voltage for sub-5 nm oxides, (ii) the temperature acceleration of time-to-breakdown increases drastically with decreasing thickness, and (iii) the combination of increased temperature acceleration, area scaling and low percentage failure rates leads to marginal intrinsic reliability for ultra-thin oxides, severely limiting further downscaling of oxide thickness.