Dumin D.J. Oxide Reliability: A Summary of Silicon Oxide Wearout, Breadown, and Reliability

World Scientific, 2002. — 281 p. — (Selected Topics in Electronics and Systems – Vol. 23). — ISBN: 981-02-4842-3.The semiconductor industry has invested billions of dollars in research, development and manufacture of high quality oxides. This investment has resulted in ever thinner oxides operating in higher performance ICs. We are now being faced with some fundamental limits on oxide thickness reduction. The quantum mechanical and wave like properties of the electron mean that oxides thinner than about 3 nm are now partially transparent to electron flow, and the almost ideal insulating oxide of earlier times is no longer realized in these ultra-thin oxides. The wave properties of the electron mean that oxides thinner than 1 nm are no longer insulators and oxides much thinner than 1 nm may never find extensive use in ICs because of excessively high oxide currents. While some high speed logic circuits may use ultra-thin oxides, reducing oxide thicknesses below 5 nm is very difficult in dynamic random memory (DRAM) applications and using oxides thinner than 8 – 10 nm in non-volatile memory applications involve serious data retention – endurance – reliability trade-offs.
Since oxide thicknesses are now reaching some fundamental thickness limitations and since much very good work has been done in the past in the area of oxide reliability, it is appropriate at this time to attempt to summarize our knowledge of oxide reliability.
This book presents in summary the state of our knowledge of oxide reliability. The articles have been written by experts who are among the most knowledgeable in the field. The book will be an invaluable aid to reliability engineers and manufacturing engineers, helping them to produce and characterize reliable oxides. It can be used as an introduction for new engineers interested in oxide reliability, besides being a reference for engineers already engaged in the field.
Readership: Reliability and manufacturing engineers, as well as researchers and academics in the areas of semiconductor devices, semiconductor manufacturing and semiconductor device reliability.Oxide Wearout, Breakdown, and Reliability
Reliability of Flash Nonvolatile Memories
Physics and Chemistry of Intrinsic Time-Dependent Dielectric Breakdown in SiO2 Dielectrics
Breakdown Modes and Breakdown Statistics of Ultrathin SiO2 Gate Oxides
MOSFET Gate Oxide Reliability: Anode Hole Injection Model and Its Applications.