Wear-out, breakdown occurrence and failure detection in 18-25 angstrom ultrathin oxides

In this paper, a comprehensive description of the ultrathin oxide failure e volution is presented. For sub-25 Angstrom, Hard BD is no longer hard. A co mplete description of the novel failure manifestation (progressive breakdow n) is done. Associated wear-out is modelled and a physical mechanism is pro posed. Finally, the relevance of the failure definition is discussed. It is a crucial point, to adopt a rigorous methodology for reliability predictio n. It is concluded that, in the case of progressive breakdown, noise occurr ence must be considered as the relevant time to failure. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.