Modification and reduction of defects in thin gate dielectric of MIS devices by injection‐thermal and irradiation treatments

The effect of high-field injection-thermal and irradiation treatments on the MIS structures reliability and defect reduction in the nanoscale gate dielectric has been investigated. Injection-thermal treatment (ITT) of MIS structures consisted of high-field electron injection into gate dielectric with the charge of defined value and subsequent parameter stabilization of MIS structures by means of thermal annealing. The MIS structures have been studied using novel techniques of multilevel current stress. Our study shows that the ITT can improve reliability of MIS structures (increase of charge-to-breakdown value) and identify defective structures. The ITT provides structural modification of SiO2 and Si–SiO2 interfaces. It has been shown that the ITT at elevated temperatures can reduce the reliability of MIS devices. Performing ITT at high temperatures leads to decrease of charge-to-breakdown average value in MIS structures. It has been demonstrated that irradiation treatment allows to reduce density of defects in thermal SiO2 films, SiO2 films doped with phosphorus, oxynitride films and as a result to increase reliability of MIS devices. (© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)