Interrelationship of voltage and temperature dependence of oxide breakdownfor ultrathin oxides

We report that voltage acceleration of time- or charge-to-breakdown is inse nsitive to temperature variations over a wide range of temperature (30 to 2 00 degrees C) for oxides below 3 nm, regardless of oxide process, injection polarity or device type (NFET, PFET). Based on this observation, an essent ially universal, non-Arrhenius temperature dependence for ultrathin oxide i s obtained by a natural normalization scheme. The consequences of these fin dings for reliability projection are discussed.