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US 6,326,792 B1Granted
Method and apparatus for lifetime prediction of dielectric breakdown
AssigneeMatsushita Electronics Corporation
InventorKenji Okada
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A stressing voltage is applied to a dielectric film (step S23). An A-SILC is monitored with stressing time and is plotted on a log-log scale (step S24). A straight line is applied to the plotting, a stressing time at which the line crosses a predetermined value of the A-SILC (a breakdown threshold) is obtained, and the obtained stressing time is predicted as the lifetime of the dielectric film (step S26).
Claims14
A dielectric film evaluating method comprising the steps of:
- repeatedly applying electrical stress of a first voltage or a first current to each of a plurality of sample dielectric films formed similarly to a target dielectric film, which is to be evaluated, for a first period of time, and repeatedly measuring an A mode stress induced leakage current (A-SILC) flowing through each of the sample dielectric films, thereby obtaining a respective specific A-SILC value for each of the plurality of sample dielectric films, each of the specific A-SILC values being a value which the A-SILC has when breakdown occurs in each of the plurality of sample dielectric films;
- and determining a breakdown threshold A-SILC of the target dielectric film by conducting a statistical analysis on the specific A-SILC value of the sample dielectric films.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.