The Relation Between Degradation Under DC and RF Stress Conditions

In this paper, we develop a method to derive degradation formulas for time-varying stress from the formulas for the constant-bias case, discuss its limitations, and apply it to a set of radio-frequency (RF) stress experiments. First, we will give a new derivation of the well-known power-law case without invoking any specific physical degradation model. Next, we will show that this derivation can be generalized to the broader class of degradation functions of type g(f(V-i) . t). We will illustrate our work with an example of hot-carrier degradation in 45-nm n-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, where an accurate prediction of the measured lifetime under RF stress conditions is obtained from the measured degradation under direct-current stress.