Surface Roughness Enhanced Current in Defectively Stressing Poly-Oxide-Poly Capacitors

Surface roughness enhanced current stressing is shown to enhance the dielectric breakdown in poly-oxide-poly capacitors. Moreover, it is demonstrated for the first time that the changes of sophisticated polysilicon surface features as depicted by AFM-PSD (power spectral density) synthesis can globally become the dominant "defects" in deteriorating the dielectric reliability under a high electric field