Yield and reliability effects of interlevel dielectric plasma enhanced deposition induced charging damage

The gate oxide damage induced by plasma enhanced CVD of ILD has been investigated. It was observed that this kind of plasma damage induces oxide soft breakdown, rather than hard breakdown, due to the high resistance of the deposited film. This fact has important implications for IC yield and reliability. In fact, soft breakdowns hardly cause IC yield loss during the e-sort. Nevertheless, the gate oxide reliability can be seriously affected by the plasma induced damage and the IC intrinsic lifetime severely reduced.