Si/SiO$_\text{2}$ MOSFET Reliability Physics: From Four-State Model to All-State Model

Abstract

As implemented in the commercialized device modeling software, the four-state nonradiative multi-phonon model has attracted intensive attention in the past decade for describing the physics in negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) and other reliability issues of Si/SiO$_\text{2}$ MOSFET devices. It was proposed initially based on the assumption that the oxygen vacancy defects (V$_\text{O}$) in SiO$_\text{2}$ dielectric layer are bistable in the Si-dimer and back-projected structures during carrier capture and emission. Through high-throughput first-principles structural search, we found V$_\text{O}$ on non-equivalent O sites in amorphous SiO$_\text{2}$ can take 4 types of structural configurations in neutral state and 7 types of configurations in +1 charged state after capturing holes, which produce a wide range of charge-state transition levels for trapping holes. The finding contrasts the structural-bistability assumption and makes the four-state model invalid for most of O sites. To describe the reliability physics accurately, we propose an all-state model to consider all these structural configurations as well as all the carrier capture/emission transitions and thermal transitions between them. With the all-state model, we show that the V$_\text{O}$ defects play important roles in causing NBTI, which challenges the recent studies that discarded V$_\text{O}$ as a possible hole trap in NBTI. Our systematical calculations on the diversified V$_\text{O}$ properties and the all-state model provide the microscopic foundation for describing the reliability physics of MOSFETs and other transistors accurately.