A Comparative NBTI Study of $\hbox{HfO}_{2}$, $\hbox{HfSiO}_{x}$, and SiON p-MOSFETs Using UF-OTF $I_{\rm DLIN}$ Technique

The time, temperature, and oxide-field dependence of negative-bias temperature instability is studied in HfO
₂
/TiN, HfSiO
_x
/TiN, and SiON/poly-Si p-MOSFETs using ultrafast on-the-fly
I

_DLIN
technique capable of providing measured degradation from very short (approximately microseconds) to long stress time. Similar to rapid thermal nitrided oxide (RTNO) SiON, HfO
₂
devices show very high temperature-independent degradation at short (submilliseconds) stress time, not observed for plasma nitrided oxide (PNO) SiON and HfSiO
_x
devices. HfSiO
_x
shows lower overall degradation, higher long-time power-law exponent, field acceleration, and temperature activation as compared to HfO
₂
, which are similar to the differences between PNO and RTNO SiON devices, respectively. The difference between HfSiO
_x
and HfO
₂
can be attributed to differences in N density in the SiO
₂
IL of these devices.