Effect and model of gate oxide breakdown on CMOS inverters

Abstract

The effect of oxide breakdown (BD) on the performance of CMOS inverters has been investigated and modeled. The results show that the inverter performance can be affected by the breakdown in a different way depending on the stress polarity applied to the inverter input. In all the cases, the oxide breakdown conduction has been modeled as gate-to-diffusion leakage with a power law formula of the type I = KVp which was previously found to describe the breakdown in capacitor structures. This seems to indicate that the breakdown physics at oxide level is the same as at circuit level. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.