Degradation of ultra-thin gate oxide LDD NMOSFET under GIDL stress

The degradation of device under GIDL (gate-induced drain leakage current) stress has been studied using LDD NMOSFETs with 1.4 nm gate oxides. Experimental result shows that the degradation of device parameters depends more strongly on Vd than on Vg. The characteristics of the GIDL current are used to analyze the damage generated during the stress. It is clearly found that the change of GIDL current before and after stress can be divided into two stages. The trapping of holes in the oxide is dominant in the first stage, but that of electrons in the oxide is dominant in the second stage. It is due to the common effects of edge direct tunneling and band-to-band tunneling. SILC (stress induced leakage current) in the NMOSFET decreases with increasing stress time under GIDL stress. The degradation characteristic of SILC also shows saturating time dependence. SILC is strongly dependent on the measured gate voltage. The higher the measured gate voltage, the less serious the degradation of the gate current. A likely mechanism is presented to explain the origin of SILC during GIDL stress.