Lifetime of SiN Capacitors Determined from Ramped Voltage and Constant Voltage Testing

Understanding SiN capacitor dielectric integrity and reliability is becoming increasingly more important. For wide-bandgap semiconductor MMIC circuits bias voltages continue to increase: up to 40 or 50 volts for GaN HFET or MMIC devices and up to 100 V for SiC. Prior work on SiN dielectrics [1,2] emphasized applications for GaAs pHEMT and HBT devices where the applied voltages are around 5-15V. This paper reports on a study comparing the analysis methods and reliability determined from ramped voltage and constant voltage capacitor testing using both the Linear Field and Reciprocal Field Models in an attempt to characterize capacitor dielectrics.