Injected charge as an indicator for a t(bd) increase of pre-stressed gate oxides

In this work single-step pre-stresses were applied to MOS gate oxide capacitors prior to constant stresses for a wide range of pre-stress parameters. The measurement results showed that an increase in time to breakdown increase was observed in the pre-stressed samples relative to the constant stress on virgin samples all stressed in the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling regime. In order to understand this time to breakdown increase and its relation to the charge trapping characteristics of the oxides, current-time, voltage-time and current-charge characteristics were assessed in detail. A power law relationship was found between the time to breakdown increase and the injected charge during the pre-stress for the measurement range of this study.