Reliability Analysis for Deuterium Incorporated Gate Oxide Film through Negative-bias Temperature Instability and Hot-carrier Injection

This paper is focused on the improvement of MOS device reliability related to deuterium process. The injection of deuterium into the gate oxide film was achieved through two kind of method, high-pressure annealing and low-energy implantation at the back-end of line, for the purpose of the passivation of dangling bonds at $SiO_2/Si$ interface. Experimental results are presented for the degradation of 3-nm-thick gate oxide ($SiO_2$) under both negative-bias temperature instability (NBTI) and hot-carrier injection (HCI) stresses using P and NMOSFETs. Annealing process was rather difficult to control the concentration of deuterium. Because when the concentration of deuterium is redundant in gate oxide excess traps are generated and degrades the performance, we found annealing process did not show the improved characteristics in device reliability, compared to conventional process. However, deuterium ion implantation at the back-end process was effective method for the fabrication of the deuterated gate oxide. Device parameter variations under the electrical stresses depend on the deuterium concentration and are improved by low-energy deuterium implantation, compared to conventional process. Our result suggests the novel method to incorporate deuterium in the MOS structure for the reliability.

Negative-bias Temperature Instability 및 Hot-carrier Injection을 통한 중수소 주입된 게이트 산화막의 신뢰성 분석