Predictive Method of Charge Storage Memory Degradation on a Dedicated 4kb Test Vehicle

This study investigates the variability in HCI (Hot Carrier Injection) degradation within a 4 kb charge storage memory array, manufactured on a dedicated wafer split process. A standard set of experiments is conducted to extract electrical features of the cells before and after stress. A statistical analysis method, based on the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) approach, is introduced to enhance the comprehension of the cell degradation prior to reliability testing. Additionally, a graphical model is developed to identify extrinsic cells in the memory array prior to stress, as well as to assess the overall technology yield. Finally, others classifier models are explored aiming to improve extrinsic cells detection before running the reliability test.