Catching the Missing EM Consequence in Soft Breakdown Reliability in Advanced FinFETs: Impacts of Self-heating, On-State TDDB, and Layout Dependence
Zuoyuan Dong, Zixuan Sun, Xin Yang, Xiaomei Li, Yongkang Xue, Chen Luo, Puyang Cai, Zirui Wang, Shuying Wang, Yewei Zhang, Chaolun Wang, Pengpeng Ren, Zhigang Ji, Xing Wu, Runsheng Wang, Ru Huang
Abstract
For the first time, the on-state (V <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">gs</inf> >0, V <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ds</inf> > 0) time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) in FinFET technology is systematically studied. The assumption that the kinetics of soft breakdown (SBD) would remain the same and have no effect on electromigration (EM) is not true using advanced physical characterization techniques (TEM/EDX/EELS), as well as electrical-statistical tests and multiphysics simulations. By catching the missing EM consequence in SBD, the impacts of self-heating and an EM-aware layout topology is studied. Our study provide solid evidence of the SBD-induced EM, which is vital for the accurate prediction and boosting circuit reliability of advanced FinFETs and other multiple-gate device technology.