New insights into the change of voltage acceleration and temperature activation of oxide breakdown

A large database of time-dependent dielectric breakdown study was conducted on 50 A˚ SiO2 film over a wide range of temperature (125–300 °C) and a large range of voltage stress (−4.4 to −6.8 V). Using an accurate methodology, we suppress any correlation between voltage and temperature dependence of the voltage acceleration factor and the activation energy. A possible origin of the non-Arrhenius temperature dependence is discussed and a valid window for E-model lifetime prediction is defined. This study shows the high temperature impact on the reliability projection and point at the difficulty to predict the time-to-breakdown using activation energy as an extrapolation parameter. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]