A Novel Technique for Curing Hot-CarrierInduced Damage by Utilizing the Forward Current of the PN-Junction in a MOSFET

Abstract

The hot-carrier-induced damage of a gate dielectric was cured with Joule heat generated by the forward current of the p-n junction between the body and drain, for the first time. The effective recovery voltage and pulse timewere optimized to cure the gatedielectricdamage produced by hot-carrier injection. Moreover, iterative damage and cyclic curing were experimentally demonstrated. Throughlow-frequency noise analyses, the degradationand recovery were verified by identifying trap density along the depth of the gate dielectric. Furthermore, this proposed method produced nearly the same recovery characteristics through source-to-body junction current in a short-channel device.