Negative Bias Temperature Instability "Recovery" under Negative Stress Voltage with Different Oxide Thicknesses.

Different phenomena are observed under negative gate voltage stress which is smaller than the previous degradation stress in PMOSFETs with different oxide thicknesses. We adopt the real time method to make a point of the drain current to study the degradation and recovery of negative bias temperature instability (NBTI). For the device with thin oxide, recovery phenomenon appears when smaller negative voltage stress was applied, due to the more influencing oxide charges detrapping effects than the interface states. For the device with thick oxide, not recovery but degradation phenomenon comes forth. As many charges are trapped in the deeper position and higher energy level in the oxide, these charges can not be detrapped. Therefore, the effect of the charge detrapping is smaller than that of the interface states in the thick oxide. The degradation presents itself during the 'recovery' time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]