Process induced oxide damage and its implications to device reliability of submicron transistors

Adverse effects of plasma based process steps on the gate oxide and device reliability are discussed. Two aspects of this process induced damage are: (a) antenna effects due to the large areas of conductors connected to the gate in a dense circuit, and (b) progressive deterioration of the gate oxide during processing. It is shown that large areas of conductors can act as antennas and degrade the hot carrier reliability of the transistors due to the process induced damage to the gate oxide. Constant gate current stress experiments show that this degradation is cumulative as the wafers are being processed through the backend of the process flow.<>