Origin of the unidentified positive mobile ions causing the bias temperature instability in SiC MOSFETs and their diffusion process

Abstract

For SiC metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), it has been shown that unidentified positive mobile ions are generated in SiO2 after conventional hydrogen annealing, which leads to significant reliability degradation known as bias temperature instability (BTI). Discovering the origin of these mobile ions is important for fabricating highly reliable SiC MOSFETs. On the basis of first-principles calculations, we verified that the BTI of SiC MOSFETs is caused by hydrogen ions combining with CO3-like defects in SiO2. These hydrogen ions dissociate from the CO3-like defects and diffuse “as protons” in SiO2. These results indicate that the observed positive mobile ions are protons.