Successive oxide breakdown statistics: correlation effects, reliability methodologies, and their limits

This paper deals with the statistics of successive oxide breakdown (BD) events in MOS devices. Correlation effects between these successive events are experimentally related to the statistics of BD current jumps, thus suggesting that they are related to lateral propagation of the BD path. The application of the successive BD theory to chip reliability assessment is discussed. Several failure criteria and the related reliability methodologies are considered and some of their limits are established.