Impact of Front End Processing on Gate Oxide Reliability

In the past decade, SiON films with N content less than 15% at. have enabled scaling of CMOS devices down to 65nm node. The introduction of new materials (e.g. high-k, metal electrodes) and integration flows resulted in new device and circuit reliability issues. Innovation in process, integration and manufacturing equipment, in addition to acceleration of understanding of reliability physics for these new materials, are necessary in order to meet product reliability and performance specifications.