Evaluation of negative bias temperature instability in ultra-thin gate oxide pMOSFETs using a new on-line PDO method

A new on-line methodology is used to characterize the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) without inherent recovery. Saturation drain voltage shift and mobility shift are extracted by I_D−V_D characterizations, which were measured before stress, and after every certain stress phase, using the proportional differential operator (PDO) method. The new on-line methodology avoids the mobility linearity assumption as compared with the previous on-the-fly method. It is found that both reaction–diffusion and charge-injection processes are important in NBTI effect under either DC or AC stress. A similar activation energy, 0.15 eV, occurred in both DC and AC NBTI processes. Also degradation rate factor is independent of temperature below 90°C and sharply increases above it. The frequency dependence of NBTI degradation shows that NBTI degradation is independent of frequencies. The carrier tunnelling and reaction–diffusion mechanisms exist simultaneously in NBTI degradation of sub-micron pMOSFETs, and the carrier tunnelling dominates the earlier NBTI stage and the reaction–diffusion mechanism follows when the generation rate of traps caused by carrier tunnelling reaches its maximum.