Reliability of HfSiON as gate dielectric for advanced CMOS technology

Optimizing nitrogen incorporation in HfSiON gate dielectric can improve overall reliability, e.g. nMOS PBTI lifetime, hot carrier (HC) lifetime, time-to-breakdown (tBD), without adverse effects on pMOS NBT1 lifetime and electron/hole mobility. The improvement is attributed to excellent thermal stability against partial-crystallization after 1100/spl deg/C annealing, and the concomitantly reduced trap generation minimizes stress induced leakage current (SILC) and flicker noise degradation after PBTI stress. A new methodology is proposed, for the first time, to correctly predict HC lifetime of HfSiON nMOS based on electron trapping.