Enhanced EBAC Detection on Gate Oxide Breakdown Isolation after High Voltage Electron Beam Irradiation

Electron Beam (EB) irradiation with high acceleration voltage is widely reported to cause significant degradation on transistor parametric performance. Thus, low acceleration voltage EB is preferred in standard failure analysis process to minimize these unwanted transistors degradations, in the expense of poorer SEM image resolution. Unknowingly, these undesirable high voltage EB effects can be leveraged for good use to enhance the EBAC detection on Gate Oxide breakdown defects. In this paper, two successful case studies on P-type and N-type MOSFET gate oxide defect isolation were described to demonstrate this enhancement through the suppression on the gate leakage by high voltage EB induced charge trapping mechanism.