Negative bias stress of MOS devices at high electric fields and degradation of MNOS devices
Journal article, 1977

One of the most important degradation effects observed in MNOS memory transistors is a negative shift of the threshold window. This negative shift is caused by a strong increase of the density of Si‐SiO2 surface traps. This effect has been proposed to be caused by the same effect that is observed in MOS devices subjected to negative‐bias stress (NBS). In this paper, a detailed study of the increase of the number of surface traps in MOS structures after NBS at temperatures (25–125°C) and fields (400–700 MV/m) comparable to those used in MNOS devices is presented. Two different behaviors are observed. At low fields the surface‐trap density increases as t^1/4 and at high fields it increases linearly with the stress time t. The low‐field behavior is temperature and field dependent and the zero‐field activation energy is determined to be 0.3 eV. The high‐field behavior is strongly field dependent but independent of temperature. A physical model is proposed to explain the surface‐trap growth as being diffusion controlled at low fields and tunneling limited at high fields. A comparison with MNOS degradation is made and it was found to be related to the t^1/4 behavior mentioned above.

MOSFET

Field-effect transistors

Negative Bias Stress

NBTI

Author

Kjell Jeppson

Department of Microelectronics and Nanoscience

Christer Svensson

Journal of Applied Physics

0021-8979 (ISSN) 1089-7550 (eISSN)

Vol. 48 5 2004-2014

Subject Categories

Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.1063/1.323909

More information

Created

10/7/2017