Lifetime study for a poly fuse in a 0.35 /spl mu/m polycide CMOS process

Poly fuses are used as the base element for one time programmable cells in a standard CMOS process. Using a defined programming current, the resistance of the poly fuse increases irreversibly over several orders of magnitude. The goal of this study is to show that a poly fuse has a sufficient life time stability to be used as a storage element even in high reliability circuits. This paper shows the drift of the resistance of a poly fuse over the whole range of programming currents for a standard polycide 0.35 /spl mu/m CMOS process. The poly fuse for the selected process is build using two different layers, which gives a special performance in terms of programming current.