Electric field and temperature acceleration of quasi-breakdown phenomena in ultrathin oxides

In this paper the quasi-breakdown phenomenon is studied for 3.5 nm ultrathin gate oxides. The appearance of this failure mode is investigated and the associated leakage current is characterized. Moreover the electric field and temperature dependence of the quasi-breakdown occurrence is analyzed: a novel procedure is proposed in order to determine the associated acceleration and to be able to predict the reliability with respect to this failure mode at nominal use conditions for deep-submicron technologies. It is shown that quasi-breakdown phenomenon is a major limiting factor for the ultrathin oxide reliability.