Reliability Analysis of MOS Devices Using Burst Pulse CV Measurement Technique

Reliability characterization of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices requires fast capacitance–voltage (CV) measurement techniques to capture the effect of defect states before they recover. Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) is one such reliability issue where oxide traps accumulate under stress and relax when bias is removed. Conventional CV measurements require longer time to sweep the voltage that alters the defect states during the measurement. Here we demonstrate a Burst CV (BCV) measurement system capable of measuring the entire CV curve in less than <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2~\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>s with a data sampling rate of 0.32 ns. The system offers burst pulse voltage range of ± 10 V, without disturbing the state of the device. The BCV system has been used to measure the BTI characteristics of an Aluminium Oxide Phosphate (ALPO) based two-terminal metal oxide semiconductor capacitor (MOScap) device by applying stress voltages from –10 V to –18 V for various durations (20 ms to 10 s) and measuring the shift of flatband voltage (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula>VFB). The BTI characteristics of the devices reveals a sublinear power-law dependency (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula>V<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${_{\text {FB}}}~\propto $ </tex-math></inline-formula> tm) with exponents around 0.24–0.31, indicating trap generation rates. These findings confirm the advantage of BCV techniques for capturing fast trap dynamics and underscore the reliability potential of oxide-based devices under various stress conditions.