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Propagation of the SiO2 breakdown event on MOS structures observed with conductive atomic force microscopy

✍ Scribed by M Porti; M Nafrı́a; X Aymerich; A Olbrich; B Ebersberger


Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
2001
Tongue
English
Weight
484 KB
Volume
59
Category
Article
ISSN
0167-9317

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✦ Synopsis


In this work, for the first time, a conductive atomic force microscope has been used to electrically characterize the degradation and breakdown propagation of stressed ultra-thin ( , 6 nm) SiO films at a nanometric scale. The results show 2 that, although a slight lateral propagation of the degradation is observed before breakdown, the affected area (few hundreds 2 of nm ) remains relatively constant. However, breakdown is laterally propagated to neighbor spots, although only in some 2 occasions morphological changes are observed. The breakdown affected area (several thousands of nm ) has been found to be strongly related to the hardness of the breakdown event.