Temperature dependence of TDDB voltage acceleration in high-κ/ SiO₂ bilayers and SiO₂ gate dielectrics

In this work, experimental evidence of time-to-breakdown power-law voltage acceleration for high-κ/SiO2 bilayer dielectrics is presented. The temperature dependence of voltage acceleration power-law exponents for high-κ/SiO2 bilayer stressed in pFET inversion is found to be comparable to those of SiO2 dielectrics. In addition, the temperature-dependence of voltage acceleration for progressive BD mode is reported. On the other hand, we present a thermally assisted hydrogen release-reaction model which can explain three key experimental observations: (1) the temperature dependence of voltage acceleration exponents, (2) the non-Arrhenius temperature dependence of TDDB, and (3) the large activation energy at high temperatures. © 2012 IEEE.