Pulsed Fowler–Nordheim current stress resistance of Si oxynitride grown with helicon-wave excited nitrogen–argon plasma

Abstract

Pulsed Fowler–Nordheim (FN) current stress resistance was investigated for the Si oxynitride grown in the helicon-wave excited N2–Ar plasma. The shift of the gate threshold voltage Vth increased with an increase in the pulse frequency for both polarities of the applied stress voltage. At low frequencies (<1 kHz), the Vth shift was larger for the negative gate-voltage stress than for the positive one. However, as the frequency exceeds about 1 kHz, the Vth shift become much higher for the positive stress than for the negative one. The Vth shift was smaller as the pulse duty ratio was larger. These findings could be explained with the surface–plasmon and avalanche breakdown models combined with the effect of the total amount of the injected carriers to the oxynitride from the Si substrate or the gate electrode. The effect of Ar ion etching during plasma processing on the FN stress resistance was also investigated. The Ar ion etching effect was found to be substantially reduced as the plasma-sheath width was large and Si oxynitride samples were grown under this condition. The mean time to failure was highly improved by the Si oxynitride samples grown under the condition of reduced Ar ion etching effect.