GIDL-induced charge injection for characterization of plasma edge damage in CMOS devices

The oxide thickening at the gate edge during poly gate reoxidation is very sensitive to plasma damage resulting from the poly-Si gate etch. The gate oxide thickening over the drain-gate overlap region can be used as a measure of the plasma edge damage. This paper presents a new method-GIDL-induced localized charge injection-to investigate plasma edge damage in CMOS devices. The sensitivity of the method and correlation with device performance is demonstrated in a study of technological splits with different levels of plasma damage. The method does not require any special test structures other than the regular transistor.