High Temperature Reliability Studies of Innovative Fuse Programming Mode

High temperature reliability of metal-gate fuses programmed below a breakpoint was studied the first time on 22nm FD-SOI at 250°C HTS for 1,000 hours with millions of bits. Programmed at 1V and 1.2V, the cell current drifts of the virgin and programmed cells were small and Gaussian-like after HTS without redundancy, ECC, or twin cells. Programmed at 1.2V spec and 1.0V, no defect found in 15Mb after HTS. However programmed at 1.45V, above spec, some defects occur after HTS, which may be due to local thermal runaway, similar to the eFuse mode.