Extraction and evolution of Fowler-Nordheim tunneling parameters of thin gate oxides under EEPROM-like dynamic degradation

A new method is presented for the extraction of the Fowler-Nordheim (FN) tu nneling parameters of thin gate oxides from experimental current-voltage ch aracteristics of Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) capacitors. In this techni que, the classical low temperature FN current model is considered but an im proved numerical procedure has been implemented for the calculation of the oxide electric field - gate voltage relationship. It is shown that this ite rative method leads to an excellent fit of experimental data with theoretic al curves for both p-type and n-type substrates, even in the case of high d oping levels. The procedure allows the determination of both FN tunneling p arameters and potential barrier heights at silicon and polysilicon interfac es with a systematic estimation of the statistical fitting errors on each p arameter. It is applied here to the study of the variations of the FN tunne ling parameters of thin oxides submitted to EEPROM-like dynamic degradation . (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.