Depassivation of latent plasma damage in nMOSFETs

Indispensable in CMOS manufacturing, plasma treatments may result in a latent damage in gate oxides. We propose a method to detect this latent damage as a function of the area of the multifingered metal pad connected to the gate, by using an experimental method based on constant current stress and oxide trapped charge measurements. We measured a power law behavior describing the dependence of the trapped charge on the injected charge.